Father’s reply was full of the words I do not want to write, but it was not a compliment to his grandmother.
“Come, Mrs Kezia,” said Mr Bagnall, “let us make it up by glasses all round, and a toast to the sweet Puritan memory of Mrs Deborah Hunter.”
“No, thank you,” said my Aunt Kezia. “As to Deborah Hunter, she has been a saint in Heaven these thirty years, and finely she’d like it (if she knew it) to have you drinking yourselves drunk in her honour. But let me tell you—and you can say what you like after it—she taught me that ‘the chief end of man was to glorify God, and to enjoy Him for ever.’ Your notion seems to be that the chief end of man is to glorify himself, and to enjoy him for ever. I think mine’s the better of the two: and as to yours, the worst thing I wish any of you is that you may get mine instead of it. Now then, Brother, I’ve had my say, and you can have yours.”
And not another word did my Aunt Kezia say, though Father stormed, and the other gentlemen laughed and joked, and paid her sarcastic compliments, all the while breakfast lasted. There were two who were silent, and those were Angus and Mr Keith. Angus seemed too poorly and unhappy to take any interest in the matter; and as to Mr Keith, I believe in his heart (if I read it right in his eyes) that he was perfectly delighted with my Aunt Kezia.
“The young ladies did not honour us by riding to the meet,” said Mr Bagnall at last, looking at that one of us who sat nearest him—which, by ill luck, happened to be Flora.
“No, Sir. I do not think my aunt would have allowed it; but—” Flora stopped, and cast her eyes on her plate.
“But if she had, you would have been pleased to come?” suggested Mr Bagnall, rubbing his hands.
He spoke in that disagreeable way in which some men do speak to girls—I do not know what to call it. It is a condescending, patronising kind of manner, as if—yes, that is it!—as if they wanted to amuse themselves by hearing the opinion of something so totally incapable of forming one. I wish they knew how the girls long to shake the nonsense out of them.
But Flora did not lose her temper, as I should have done: she held her own with a quiet dignity which I envied, but could never have imitated.
“Pardon me, Sir. I was about to say the direct contrary—that if my aunt had allowed it, I for one would rather not have gone.”