"Oh, Mrs Mackenzie!"
"And oh, Griselda! Why should I not send for him? You don't suppose I'm going to let this kind of thing go on from month to month, till that old woman at the Cedars has contrived to carry her point. Certainly not."
"Now that the matter is settled, of course, I shall not go on staying here."
"Not after you're married, my dear. We couldn't well take in Sir John and all the children. Besides, we shall be going down to Scotland for the grouse. But I mean you shall be married out of this house. Don't look so astonished. Why not? There's plenty of time before the end of July."
"I don't think he means anything of the kind; I don't indeed."
"Then he must be the queerest man that ever I met; and I should say about the falsest and most heartless also. But whether he means to do that or does not, he must mean to do something. You don't suppose he'll take all your fortune away from you, and then leave you without coming to say a word to you about it? If you had disputed the matter, and put him to all manner of expense; if, in short, you had been enemies through it all, that might have been possible. But you have been such a veritable lamb, giving your fleece to the shearer so meekly,—such a true Griselda, that if he were to leave you in that way, no one would ever speak to him again."
"But you forget Lady Ball."
"No, I don't. He'll have a disagreeable scene with his mother, and I don't pretend to guess what will be the end of that; but when he has done with his mother, he'll come here. He must do it. He has no alternative. And when he does come, I want you to look your best. Believe me, my dear, there would be no muslins in the world and no starch, if it was not intended that people should make themselves look as nice as possible."
"Young people," suggested Margaret.
"Young people, as you call them, can look well without muslin and without starch. Such things were intended for just such persons as you and me; and as for me, I make it a rule to take the goods the gods provide me."