“Ay,” said the old lady; “or perhaps——? The perhaps is just what I would like to know.”
“Sarah,” said Miss Beenie from behind, “what are you doing putting things in the girlie’s head?”
“Just darn your stockings and hold your tongue,” said the elder sister. She leaned her weight more heavily on Effie’s arm by way of securing her attention.
“Now and then,” she said, “the road takes a crook before it divides. There’s that marshy bit where the Laggan burn runs before you come to Windyha’. If you are not thinking, it just depends on which side of the road you take whether you go straight on the good highway to Dumfries, or down the lane that’s always deep in dust, or else a very slough of despond. You’re there before you know.”
“But what has that to do with me?” said Effie; “and then,” she added, with a little elevation of her head, “if I’m in any difficulty, there is Uncle John.”
“Oh, ay: he’s often very fine in the pulpit. I would not ask for a better guide in the Gospel, which is his vocation. But in the ways of this world, Effie Ogilvie, your Uncle John is just an innocent like yourself.”
“That is all you know!” said Effie, indignantly. “Me an innocent!” She was accustomed to hear the word applied to the idiot of the parish, the piteous figure which scarcely any parish is without. Then she laughed, and added, with a sudden change of tone, “They think me very sensible at Allonby. They think I am the one that is always serious. They say I am fact: and they are poetry, I suppose,” she said, after a second pause, with another laugh.
“Poetry!” said Miss Dempster, “you’re meaning silly nonsense. They are just two haverels these two daft-like girls with their dark rooms, and all their affected ways; and as for the brother——”
“What about the brother?” said Effie, with an almost imperceptible change of tone.
“Aha!” said the old lady, “now we see where the interest lies.”