Her familiar accents instinctively banished the aberrations.
"Tolerably, tolerably," he said, with his old air. "We had the affairs of Guthrie and Co. to settle up. I settled them, though."
"Andrew would be a great help," she replied, with an apprehensive glance at him. She was much in her nephew's confidence at present.
"Andrew, pooh!" said his father. "He'd talk the hind leg off an elephant. When things need settling, I just settle them myself and leave him to grumble away to Thomieson."
Miss Walkingshaw gasped, and the widow gave the sweetest little laugh.
"Poor Andrew!" said she.
"Poor Andrew indeed," retorted her friend, with more indignation than she had almost ever permitted herself in the presence of her formidable brother.
He looked at her in genuine surprise. So subtly had his point of view altered that he quite failed to grasp her cause of complaint.
"What's the matter, Mary?" he asked.
"Oh, if you don't see, what's the good in my trying to explain?"