“He’ll take good care of that!” returned the factor. “What did I ever do to deserve it?—There’s that MacPhail, now—to think of him! Didn’t I do what man could for him? Didn’t I keep him about the place when all the rest were dismissed? Didn’t I give him the key of the library, that he might read and improve his mind? And look what comes of it!”
“Ye mean, sir,” said Lizzy, quite innocently, “’at that’s the w’y ye ha’e dune wi’ God, an’ sae he winna heed ye?”
The factor had meant nothing in the least like it. He had merely been talking as the imps of suggestion tossed up. His logic was as sick and helpless as himself. So at that he held his peace— stung in his pride at least—perhaps in his conscience too, only he was not prepared to be rebuked by a girl like her, who had—— Well, he must let it pass: how much better was he himself?
But Lizzy was loyal: she could not hear him speak so of Malcolm and hold her peace as if she agreed in his condemnation.
“Ye’ll ken Ma’colm better some day, sir,” she said.
“Well, Lizzy,” returned the sick man, in a tone that but for feebleness would have been indignant, “I have heard a good deal of the way women will stand up for men that have treated them cruelly, but you to stand up for him passes!”
“He’s been the best friend I ever had,” said Lizzy.
“Girl! how can you sit there, and tell me so to my face?” cried the factor, his voice strengthened by the righteousness of the reproof it bore. “If it were not the dead of the night——”
“I tell ye naething but the trowth, sir,” said Lizzy, as the contingent threat died away. “But ye maun lie still or I maun gang for the mistress. Gien ye be the waur the morn, it’ll be a’ my wyte, ’cause I cudna bide to hear sic things said o’ Ma’colm.”
“Do you mean to tell me,” persisted her charge, heedless of her expostulation, “that the fellow who brought you to disgrace, and left you with a child you could ill provide for—and I well know never sent you a penny all the time he was away, whatever he may have done now—is the best friend you ever had?”