My mother sees that I need soothing. ‘That is far from being all the difference,’ she would say eagerly. ‘There’s my silk, for instance. Though I say it mysel, there’s not a better silk in the valley of Strathmore. Had Jess a silk of any kind—not to speak of a silk like that?’
‘Well, she had no silk, but you remember how she got that cloak with beads.’
‘An eleven and a bit! Hoots, what was that to boast of! I tell you, every single yard of my silk cost—’
‘Mother, that is the very way Jess spoke about her cloak!’
She lets this pass, perhaps without hearing it, for solicitude about her silk has hurried her to the wardrobe where it hangs.
‘Ah, mother, I am afraid that was very like Jess!’
‘How could it be like her when she didna even have a wardrobe? I tell you what, if there had been a real Jess and she had boasted to me about her cloak with beads, I would have said to her in a careless sort of voice, “Step across with me, Jess and I’ll let you see something that is hanging in my wardrobe.” That would have lowered her pride!’
‘I don’t believe that is what you would have done, mother.’
Then a sweeter expression would come into her face. ‘No,’ she would say reflectively, ‘it’s not.’
‘What would you have done? I think I know.’