‘Really,’ said the Leddy, after Walkinshaw had told her the news, and that only the wetness of the road had prevented his sister and Ellen from coming with him to town,—‘Really, Jamie, to tell you the gude’s truth, though I would hae been blithe to see Mary, and that weel-bred lassie, your joe Nell Frizel—I’m very thankful they hae na come—for, unless I soon get some relief, I’ll be herrit out o’ house and hall wi’ Beenie and Walky,—twa thoughtless wantons,—set them up wi’ a clandestine marriage in their teens! it’s enough to put marriages out of fashion.’
‘I thought,’ replied Walkinshaw, playing with her humours, ‘that the marriage was all your own doing.’
‘My doing, Jamie Walkinshaw! wha daurs to say the like o’ that? I’m as clear o’t as the child unborn—to be sure they were married here, but that was no fault o’ mine—my twa grandchildren, it could ne’er be expected that I would let them be married on the crown-o’-the-causey—But, wasna baith his mother and father present, and is that no gospel evidence, that I was but an innocent onlooker?—No, no, Jamie, whomsoever ye hear giving me the wyte o’ ony sic Gretna Green job, I redde ye put your foot on the spark, and no let it singe my character.—I’m abundantly and overmuch punished already, for the harmless jocosity, in the cost and cumbering o’ their keeping.’
‘Well, but unless you had sanctioned their marriage, and approved o’t beforehand, they would never have thought of taking up their residence with you.’
‘Ye’re no far wrang there, Jamie; I’ll no deny that I gied my approbation, and I would hae done as muckle for your happiness, had ye been o’ a right conforming spirit and married Beenie, by the whilk a’ this hobbleshaw would hae been spare’t; but there’s a awful difference between approving o’ a match, and providing a living and house-room, bed, board, and washing, for two married persons—and so, although it may be said in a sense, that I had a finger in the pye, yet every body who kens me, kens vera weel that I would ne’er hae meddled wi’ ony sic gunpowder plot, had there been the least likelihood that it would bring upon me sic a heavy handful. In short, nobody, Jamie, has been more imposed upon than I hae been—I’m the only sufferer. De’il-be-lickit has it cost Dirdumwhamle, but an auld Muscovy duck, that he got sent him frae ane o’ your uncle’s Jamaica skippers two years ago, and it was then past laying—we smoor’t it wi’ ingons the day afore yesterday, but ye might as soon hae tried to mak a dinner o’ a hesp o’ seven heere yarn, for it was as teugh as the grannie of the cock that craw’t to Peter.’
‘But surely,’ said Walkinshaw, affecting to condole with her, ‘surely my uncle, when he has had time to cool, will come forward with something handsome.’
‘Surely—Na, an he dinna do that, what’s to become o’ me?—Oh! Jamie, your uncle’s no a man like your worthy grandfather,—he was a saint o’ a Christian disposition—when your father married against both his will and mine, he did na gar the house dirl wi’ his stamp to the quaking foundation; but on the Lord’s day thereafter, took me by the arm—oh! he was o’ a kindly nature—and we gaed o’er thegither, and wis’d your father and mother joy, wi’ a hunder pound in our hand—that was acting the parent’s part!’
‘But, notwithstanding all that kindness, you know he disinherited my father,’ replied Walkinshaw seriously, ‘and I am still suffering the consequences.’
‘The best o’ men, Jamie,’ said the Leddy, sympathisingly, ‘are no perfect, and your grandfather, I’ll ne’er maintain, was na a no mere man—so anent the disinheritance, there was ay something I could na weel understand; for, although I had got an inkling o’ the law frae my father, who was a deacon at a plea—as a’ the Lords in Embro’ could testificate, still there was a because in that act of sederunt and session, the whilk, in my opinion, required an interlocutor frae the Lord Ordinary to expiscate and expone, and, no doubt, had your grandfather been spare’t, there would hae been a rectification.—But, waes me, the Lord took him to himsel; in the very hour when Mr. Keelevin, the lawyer, was doun on his knees reading a scantling o’ a new last will and settlement.—Eh! Jamie, that was a moving sight,—before I could get a pen, to put in your dying grandfather’s hand, to sign the paper, he took his departal to a better world, where, we are taught to hope, there are neither lawyers nor laws.’
‘But if my uncle will not make a settlement on Robina, what will you do?’ said Walkinshaw, laughing.