“Hold there, my child! If you call any cost little, I will not hear a word more: we should be but running a race from different points to different goals! It will cost—that is enough! How much it will cost me, you can not calculate, for you do not know what money stands for in my eyes. There are things before which money is insignificant!”
“Those dreary old books!” said Alexa to herself, casting a glance on the shelves that filled the room from floor to ceiling, and from wall to wall.
“What I was going to say, father,” she returned, “was, that I have a little money of my own, and this affair shall cost you nothing. Leave me to contrive. Would you tell him his friends must pay his board, or take him away? It would be a nice anecdote in the annals of the Fordyces of Potlurg!”
“At the same time, what more natural?” rejoined her father. “His friends must in any case be applied to! I learn from his pocket-book—”
“Father!”
“Content yourself, Alexa. I have a right to know whom I receive under my roof. Besides, have I not learned thereby that the youth is a sort of connection!”
“You don't mean it, father?”
“I do mean it. His mother and yours were first cousins.”
“That is not a connection; it's a close kinship!”
“Is it?” said the laird, dryly.