"And so that is all the thanks you're giving him. Wait, my lass, till you're as auld as I am, with no a soul in the wide world caring a bawbee if you're clad in sackcloth and ashes, and then see if ye woudna like to be made a lily o' the field. Just arrayed in glory wi'out a toil or a spin."
"Quite right, Mrs. Cameron," put in Dr. Kennedy, with a laugh. "She will have plenty of toiling and spinning by and bye; why shouldn't she be a flower and do credit to us all for one evening?"
She looked at him from head to foot. "A flower for you to wear in your buttonhole, apparently. Tom, are all men alike?"
"I am human, at any rate," he said quietly.
"Oh, come away, come away!" cried Mrs. Cameron, impatiently. "Come and put it on, like a good lassie, and don't be chopping logic. It's time enough to be an angel when you've done being a girl, and you'll have more chance o' bein' one if ye make the best o' your gifts in this world, I can tell you. So come away, my dear, there may be a stitch or two a-wantin', and the time is none too long."
But Marjory stood her ground even after the old lady had bustled upstairs again, and she looked so serious that Dr. Kennedy was driven into suggesting that if she preferred it, she might wear her old gown.
"It is not that," she said slowly. "It is beautiful. I could see that, at a glance; but--Tom, did Mrs. Vane choose it?"
His laugh had a certain content in it. "My dear child, I prefer people to be dressed as I like, and I am generally supposed to have good taste."
"Very, I should say," she remarked, with a curious accent of regret in her voice.
But the fact was indubitable. When she came down again in a shimmer of silver and white, set cunningly with frosted rowan berries showing a glint of scarlet here and there, she knew so well that her dress was perfect, that from a new bashfulness she turned the tables on him swiftly.