"How homelike it all seems here!" said Christian when they were seated around the table and old Hector had asked a fervent blessing on their meeting. "I was afraid you would have taken to 'chamber sets' and other view-fangled devices. It seems so cosy to see the old chintz hangings and dark furniture just as I left it."
"Na, na," said the old man. "Ye 'll find no new fashions here, my woman, not so long as I am to the fore."
"But, Baby, I do miss one thing," said Christian as she took her cup. "Where is the dear old china, the bonny wee cups? I thought you would have them out to celebrate our return, as you used to do our birthdays. I hope nothing has happened to them, for, forbye they were our grandmother's, that old china is priceless, just now."
"Well, you see, Mr. Van Alstine sent Marie the white china in a present, so she naturally likes to show it," answered Miss Baby. "The wee cups are all safe and sound, and you shall have them for your breakfast, with your own basin for your porridge. I have never let any one eat porridge from your basin, though we have them for breakfast every morning.* But perhaps you have forgotten how to eat oatmeal?"
* Both "porridge" and "broth" are plural nouns in Scotch, and take plural verbs and pronouns.
"Hoot, toot!" said Doctor Campbell, laughing. "Have we not just come from 'the land o' cakes'?"
Meantime, Marion sat blushing scarlet at her own stupidity. What could she have been thinking of? Of course the old china was the most elegant. Did not Mrs. Tremaine so value the few bits she possessed of it as to give them the most honoured place in the china cupboard? How could she have been so stupid! And how lucky that no one knew of her blunder but Aunt Baby, who had turned it off so cleverly! What would Aunt Christian have said if she had only known? And so she sat in silence, vexed and uncomfortable, while the others laughed and chattered broad Scotch, and even Gaelic, which, however, nobody could speak fluently but Hector and Duncan Campbell.
"Oh, and you must know we met Mr. Van Alstine and Eiley in New York."
"No! Where did you find them?"
"Came plump upon them the first thing before we had been ashore an hour," said Doctor Campbell. "Van Alstine had come up to see about some disembarkation of Southern hides or other savoury commodities of that nature. He seems a fine fellow."