‘What did you think of it all, granny? Who did you like best? Did you like the tableau, with the Queen and the ladies? Wasn’t it like a picture? I wonder if the real Queen Margaret was as handsome as ours, and all her maidens as sweet.’
‘Your head is just turned with them, J’yce; and yon would be your doing, too? Putting up Mrs. Bellendean upon a throne, as if she was the duchess. I thought that bid to be one o’ your fancies; and they just do what ye tell them, it seems to me, young and auld, and the leddy hersel’. Your head would be just turned, if it werena for me, that never spoilt ye. Sit to the table like a reasonable creature, and take your tea.’
‘I don’t want any tea, granny. I am only tired. There was a gentleman there——’
‘And what’s that to you, if there were a hundred gentlemen?’ said her guardian quickly. ‘Na, na; there’s to be nae talk about gentlemen between you and me.’
‘It was an old gentleman, granny,’ said Joyce, with a smile curving slightly the grave lines of her mouth.
‘The auld anes are often waur than the young anes,’ the old woman said.
‘Oh, granny!’ cried Joyce, ‘what is that to me, if they are old or young? This one asked me—granny, listen! listen! for my heart is beating hard, and I must get some one to listen to me;—he asked me, where I had got my name,—who had given me my name? with a look—oh, if I could let you see his look! Not as some do, just staring, which means nothing but folly—but a look that made his eyes open wide, and the colour go out of his face.’
‘It was just very impident of any man to look at you like that.’
‘No, it was not impudent. He was an old man with a sweet face, as if he was somebody’s father—some girl’s father that is my age. And he asked me, “Young lady” (he did not know who I was)—“young lady, where did you get your name?"’
The terms of this address moved Janet much more than the meaning. ‘Well, I’ll not say that I’m surprised: for if ever there was a young lass that looked like a lady, no to flatter ye—for flattery’s no my way——’