“What sud she be?” retorted Miss Horn. “Wad ye hae her beeried warm?”
He followed her from the room in silence, with the sense of a faint sting on his lips. She led him into her parlour, and gave him a glass of wine.
“Ye’ll come to the beerial upo’ Setterday?” she asked, half inviting, half enquiring.
“I’m sorry to say, mem, ’at I canna,” he answered. “I promised Maister Graham to tak the schule for him, an’ lat him gang.”
“Weel, weel! Mr Graham’s obleeged to ye, nae doobt, an’ we canna help it. Gie my compliments to yer gran’father.”
“I’ll du that, mem. He’ll be sair pleased, for he’s unco gratefu’ for ony sic attention,” said Malcolm, and with the words took his leave.
CHAPTER X.
THE FUNERAL.
That night the weather changed, and grew cloudy and cold. Saturday morning broke drizzly and dismal. A north-east wind tore off the tops of the drearily tossing billows. All was gray—enduring, hopeless gray. Along the coast the waves kept roaring on the sands, persistent and fateful; the Scaurnose was one mass of foaming white; and in the caves still haunted by the tide, the bellowing was like that of thunder.
Through the drizzle-shot wind and the fog blown in shreds from the sea, a large number of the most respectable of the male population of the burgh, clothed in Sunday gloom deepened by the crape on their hats, made their way to Miss Horn’s, for, despite her rough manners, she was held in high repute. It was only such as had reason to dread the secret communication between closet and house-top that feared her tongue; if she spoke loud, she never spoke false, or backbit in the dark. What chiefly conduced however to the respect in which she was held, was that she was one of their own people, her father having died minister of the parish some twenty years before.
Comparatively little was known of her deceased cousin, who had been much of an invalid, and had mostly kept to the house, but all had understood that Miss Horn was greatly attached to her; and it was for the sake of the living mainly that the dead was thus honoured.