“Do let him have his sleep out, Mrs. Mitchell,” said Turkey’s mother.
“You’ve let him sleep too long already,” she returned, ungraciously. “He’ll do all he can, waking or sleeping, to make himself troublesome. He’s a ne’er-do-well, Ranald. Little good’ll ever come of him. It’s a mercy his mother is under the mould, for he would have broken her heart.”
I had come to myself quite by this time, but I was not in the least more inclined to acknowledge it to Mrs. Mitchell.
“You’re wrong there, Mrs. Mitchell,” said Elsie Duff; and my reader must remember it required a good deal of courage to stand up against a woman so much older than herself, and occupying the important position of housekeeper to the minister. “Ranald is a good boy. I’m sure he is.”
“How dare you say so, when he served your poor old grandmother such a wicked trick? It’s little the children care for their parents nowadays. Don’t speak to me.”
“No, don’t, Elsie,” said another voice, accompanied by a creaking of the door and a heavy step. “Don’t speak to her, Elsie, or you’ll have the worst of it. Leave her to me.—If Ranald did what you say, Mrs. Mitchell, and I don’t deny it, he was at least very sorry for it afterwards, and begged grannie’s pardon; and that’s a sort of thing you never did in your life.”
“I never had any occasion, Turkey; so you hold your tongue.”
“Now don’t you call me Turkey. I won’t stand it. I was christened as well as you.”
“And what are you to speak to me like that? Go home to your cows. I dare say they’re standing supperless in their stalls while you’re gadding about. I’ll call you Turkey as long as I please.”
“Very well, Kelpie—that’s the name you’re known by, though perhaps no one has been polite enough to use it to your face, for you’re a great woman, no doubt—I give you warning that I know you. When you’re found out, don’t say I didn’t give you a chance beforehand.”