“It’ll be lang or ye fill that chair, Cossie, my man!” she said at length,—but not with the smile of play, rather with the look of admonition, as if it was the boy’s first duty to grow in breadth in order to fill the chair, and restore the symmetry of the world.
Cosmo glanced up, but did not speak, and presently was lost again in the thoughts from which his grandmother had roused him as one is roused by a jolt on the road.
“What are you dreaming about, Cossie?” she said again, in a tone wavering but imperative.
Her speech was that of a gentlewoman of the old time, when the highest born in Scotland spoke Scotch.
Not yet did Cosmo reply. Reverie does not agree well with manners, but it would besides have been hard for him to answer the old lady’s question—not that he did not know something at least of what was going on in his mind, but that, he knew instinctively, it would have sounded in her ears no hair better than the jabber of Jule Sandy.
“Mph!” she said, offended at his silence; “Ye’ll hae to learn manners afore ye’re laird o’ Glenwarlock, young Cosmo!”
A shadow of indignation passed over Grizzie’s rippled, rather than wrinkled face, but she said nothing. There was a time to speak and a time to be silent; nor was Grizzie indebted to Solomon, but to her own experience and practice, for the wisdom of the saw. Only the pared potatoes splashed louder in the water as they fell. And the old lady knew as well what that meant, as if the splashes had been articulate sounds from the mouth of the old partisan.
The boy rose, and coming forward, rather like one walking in his sleep, stood up before his grandmother, and said,
“What was ye sayin’, gran’mamma?”
“I was sayin’ what ye wadna hearken till, an that’s enouch,” she answered, willing to show offence.