Mrs. Hanson rose, she was trembling.
"My Lady, that I should hev to tell 'ee a stranger, yet with a face so kind, that emboldened I be—my Lady—this maid, this perilous wicked maid——" the old dame stopped for a moment, quivering and shaking, "this perilous bad, wicked onnatchral maid did say to me—I hate 'ee, I du! Said it my lady wi' her own lips and tongue, she did! And I said tu her 'Betty Hanson, granddarter o' mine, 'ee may be, but never, never will I abide in a house where hatred du exist, so out of this house du 'ee go for a bad perilous maid on the morrow!' And this be the morrow, my Lady——"
"But she is so young, only a child and surely you would not let her go without, knowing she is going into safety and into the house of friends? She is your granddaughter and you are responsible for her! Do you think that you are acting rightly? Do you think—oh please don't think that I am preaching to you—but she is so young and so pretty and to think of her going—and never even knowing where the poor child is going to!"
"I hev chose for she a good husband, a man wi' thirty-five shillings a week coming in, a cottage too and of quiet ways!"
"But if she does not love him?" Kathleen asked, and, remembering her own marriage, blushed red as a rose.
"Love him indeed, my lady, hev I not chose he for she? A good upstanding, upright man as ever was, to Church reg'lar twice a Sundays, walking in the fear of God, he du, and very respectable wi' never a word to be heard against he—and—and——" Mrs. Hanson paused nervously and exhausted for the moment.
"But she is only a child! Betty, come here, Betty!"
"Betty, du 'ee hear her Ladyship a-speaking to 'ee?" cried the grandmother.
But Betty at the dresser, her back obstinately turned, did not move.
"There, there!" said Mrs. Hanson triumphantly, "'ee can see for yourself, my Lady, how bad and de-fiant and obstinant her du be—Oh Betty, shame on thee!" the old woman added, for Kathleen herself had risen and had gone across the room to the lonely little figure and all suddenly had put a kind arm about those heaving shoulders.