“The English country may be wonderful, though I know very little about it; but you are forgetting it is not here,” Miss Dempster said. “This is Scotland; maybe you may never have heard the name before.”
It is needless to say that the ladies and gentlemen from across the Atlantic smiled at the old native woman’s mistake.
“Oh yes, we know Scotland very well,—almost best of all,—for has not everybody read the Waverleys?—at least all our fathers and mothers read them, though they may be a little out of date in our day.”
“You must be clever indeed if Walter Scott is not clever enough for you,” said the old lady grimly. “But here’s just one thing that a foolish person like me, it seems, can correct you in, and that’s that this countryside is not England. No, nor ever was; and Adam Fleeming in his grave yonder could have told you that.”
“Was he a Border chief? was he one of the knights in Branksome Hall? We know all about that. And to think you should be of the same race, and have lived here always, and known the story, and sung the song all your life!”
“I never was much addicted to singing songs, for my part. He must have been a feckless kind of creature to let her get between him and the man that wanted his blood. But he was very natural after that I will say. ‘I hackit him in pieces sma’.’” said Miss Dempster; “that is the real Border spirit: and I make little doubt he was English—the man with the gun.”
The pretty young ladies in their pretty toilettes gathered about the old lady.
“It is most interesting,” they said; “just what one wished to find in the old country—the real accent—the true hereditary feeling.”
“You are just behaving like an old haverel,” said Miss Beenie to her sister in an undertone. It seldom occurred to her to take the command of affairs, but she saw her opportunity and seized it.
“For our part,” she said, “it is just as interesting to us to see real people from America. I have heard a great deal about them, but I never saw them before. It will be a great change to find yourselves in the midst of ceevilization? And what was that about mosses growing on your poor bit little hands? Bless me! I have heard of hair and fur, but never of green growth. Will that be common on your side of the water?”