“Little! ye might say naething ava, and no be far wrang,” answered Miss Jean, briskly. “A puir dirty three pund, or twa pund ten, for a guid hunder. Ye’ll be getting mair for your twa, Sandy Muir, or ye wadna look sae innocent! Where is’t, man? and ye’re an auld sleekit sneckdrawer, after a’, and ken how to tak care o’ yoursel.”
“I ken ane, Miss Jean, would gie ye five pounds for every hundred, and mony thanks into the bargain,” said the old man, his breath coming short and his face flushing all over with anxious haste; “and a decent lad and landed security. I might have told you sooner, if I had kent; but, you see, I never thought it would answer you.”
“Answer me! I find guid siller answer me better than maist things that folk put their trust in,” said Miss Jean, laying down her stocking, and lifting up the frosty cold blue eyes, which again twinkled and glimmered with eagerness, to the old man’s face. “Ye ken ane; and does he gie you this muckle for your twa hunder pounds?”
“Na, my twa hundred is out of my ain power, in the Ayr bank; besides, its mair siller this lad wants—mine would do him nae service.”
“This lad! wha does the auld tricky body mean?” said Miss Jean, fixing her sharp eyes curiously on Uncle Sandy, “five pounds in the hunder—ye’re meaning he’ll gie me that by the year, and keep a’ my siller where I never can lay hand on’t again, Sandy Muir?”
“At no hand,” said the old man, with dignity, “the best of landed security, and the siller aye at your call, and the interest punctual to a day.”
Miss Jean’s mouth watered and her fingers itched; it was impossible to think of this treasure without yearning to clutch it. “Ane might put by thretty pounds in the year,” she said, musingly. “And how do you ca’ this lad when ye name him, Sandy Muir?”
“I’ve seen his name in the papers,” said the old man, with mingled exultation and anxiety, “and there it stands, ‘Harry Muir Allenders, Esq., of Allenders,’ but at hame here we call him your nephew and mine, Harry Muir.”
Miss Jean uttered a passionate cry, rose from her seat, and flung the stocking with all her feeble might in the face of her visitor. “Eh, Sandy Muir, ye auld, leein, artful, designing villain! was’t no enough that ye came ance already wi’ you lang-tongued writer and reived my house of guid papers that were worth siller, but ye would come again, ye smooth-spoken, white-headed hypocrite, to seize my very substance away from me, and take bread out of a lone woman’s mouth to make a great man of a graceless prodigal. Ye auld sinner! ye hard-hearted theiving spoiler, that I should say so! how dare ye come to break a puir auld woman’s heart, and tantalize the frail life out of me, wi’ your lees and deceits about siller? Oh, Sandy Muir!”
And Miss Jean threw herself down once more in her hard chair, and began to wipe the corners of her eyes; for the disappointment of her ruined expectations was really as hard upon her miserable soul as the failing of fortune or fame is at any time to its eager pursuer, who has just lifted his hand to grasp what Fate remorselessly snatches away.