"She's not a housemaid. She's just staying with us for a while."
"Ye'd think Eesabell micht hae eneugh adae wi' her ain, 'thoot takin' in ony strangers."
"But Mary is to help with the housework, in return for her board and clothes."
"Let her wear a kep an' apron, then, an' eat wi' Marg'et."
"Margaret might object," and I laughed at the probable dismay of our stalwart, rough-and-ready five-foot-tenner, should this ladyfied blonde permanently invade her domain.
"Hoo lang's she gaun to st'y?"
"That's more than I can tell you."
When Mary had been a week in the house, it became apparent that something must be done with her.
"She's bound she'll not go back to the public school, Dave, and yet she cannot read or write. Do you think we can afford to send her to boarding-school—to a convent, for instance, where she'd be well looked after, and allowances made for her backwardness?"
Belle and I were out driving together. It was the first springlike evening we had had, and I was trying Jim Atwood's new mare on Maple Avenue, which had been newly block-paved. So engrossed was I in watching her paces I did not reply to my wife at once, and she continued: