"Mother," she whispered at last, "what are we to do?"
"There's twa-thirds of the poison left," said Mrs. Gourlay.
"Mother!" cried Janet.
"Gourlay's dochter may gang on the parish if she likes, but his wife never will. You may hoast yourself to death in a garret in the poorhouse, but I'll follow my boy."
The sudden picture of her own lonely death as a pauper among strangers, when her mother and brother should be gone, was so appalling to Janet that to die with her mother seemed pleasanter. She could not bear to be left alone.
"Mother," she cried in a frenzy, "I'll keep ye company!"
"Let us read a chapter," said Mrs. Gourlay.
She took down the big Bible, and "the thirteent' chapter o' First Corinthians," she announced in a loud voice, as if giving it out from the pulpit, "the thirteent'—o' the First Corinthians:"—
"'Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.