“I think, doctor,” said Mr Rainy gravely, “if you were to give your mind to it, you could make her see her interest, and her duty as well.”
“I am not so sure of that. Nor would I like to say, that to take your way, would be either her interest or her duty.”
“Nonsense, man! Consider the good a woman like that might do. I think I’ll send a letter to her friend Mr Hume. He can set her duty before her, as to the spending of the money. They are good at that, these ministers. And there is Mrs Esselmont! If she were to take up Allison Bain, it would be the making of her. And she might well do it. For John Bain came of as good a stock as any Esselmont of them all. Only of late they let slip their chances—set them at naught, I daresay, as Mistress Allison is like to do. Yes, I’ll write to Mrs Esselmont. She has taken to serious things of late, I hear, but she kens as weel as anither the value of a competence to a young woman like Allison Bain.”
“Does Mistress Allison know anything of this nephew of Brownrig’s?”
“All that she knows is that there are folk who can claim kinship with her husband.”
“Well, I hope he is a good man if this money is to go to him, as I cannot but think it may.”
Mr Rainy said nothing for a moment, but looked doubtfully at the doctor.
“He is an unworldly kind of a man,” said he to himself, “and though he has not said as much, I daresay he is thinking in his heart that it is a fine thing in Allison Bain to be firm in refusing to take the benefit of what was left to her. And if I were to tell who the next of kin is, it might confirm her in her foolishness. But I’ll say nothing to him, nor to Mrs Esselmont.”
Then he added aloud:
“Speak you a word to her. She will hear you if she will hear any one. Make her see that it is her duty to give up her own will, and take what is hers, and help other folk with it. She is one of the kind that thinks much of doing her duty, I should say.”