They all paused in the impassioned strain of their thoughts to look at him. This new note struck in the midst of them was startling and incomprehensible, yet checked the excitement and vehemence of their own feelings. ‘Ah, Andro,’ said old Peter, ‘ye’re a wise man. Ye would like to hear a’ about it, and wha they are, and if the new freends—the new freends’—the old man coughed over the words to get his voice—‘if they’re maybe grander folk and mair to your credit’—he broke off into his usual laugh, but a laugh harsh and broken. ‘Ye’re a wise lad, Andro, my man—ye’re a wise lad.’
‘It is very natural, I think,’ said Andrew, reddening, ‘that I should wish to know. We have spoken many a time of Joyce’s—friends. I wish to know about them, and what they are, naturally, as any one in my position would do.’
‘Joyce’s freends!—I thocht I kent weel what that meant,’ said Janet. ‘Eh! to hear him speak of Joyce’s freends. I thocht I kent weel what that meant,’ she repeated, with a smile of bitterness. Halliday had taken her seat at the table, and she went and seated herself by the wall at as great a distance from the group as the limits of space would permit. The old woman’s eyes were keen with grief and bitter pain, and that sense of being superseded which is so hard to bear. She thought that Joyce had put her chair a little closer to that of the schoolmaster, detaching herself from Peter, and that the young people already formed a little party by themselves. This was the form her jealous consciousness of Joyce’s superiority had always taken, even when everything went well. She burst forth again in indignant prophetic strains, taking a little comfort in this thought.
‘But dinna you think you’ll get her,’ she cried, ‘no more than Peter or me!—dinna you believe that they’ll think you good enough for her, Andrew Halliday. If it’s ended for us, it’s mair than ended for you. Do you think a grand sodger-officer, that was the Captain’s commander, and high, high up, nigh to the Queen herself,—do you think a man like that will give his dauchter—and such a dauchter, fit for the Queen’s Court if ever lady was—to a bit poor little parish schoolmaister like you?’
The comfort which Janet took from this prognostication was bitter, but it was great. A curious pride in the grandeur of the officer who was ‘the Captain’s’ commander made her bosom swell. At least there was satisfaction in that and in the sudden downfall, the unmitigated and prompt destruction of all hopes that might be entertained by that whippersnapper, who dared to demand explanations on the subject of Joyce’s ‘friends’—friends in Scotch peasant parlance meaning what ‘parents’ means in French, the family and nearest relatives. Janet had rightly divined that Halliday received the news not with sympathetic pain or alarm, but with suppressed delight, looking forward to the acquisition to himself, through his promised wife, of ‘friends’ who would at once elevate him to the rank of gentleman, after which he longed with a consciousness of having no internal right to it, which old Janet’s keen instincts had always comprehended—far, far different from Joyce, who wanted no elevation,—who was a lady born.
‘Granny,’ said Joyce, with a trembling voice, ‘you think very little, very, very little—I see it now for the first time—of me.’
‘Me think little of ye! that’s a bonnie story; but weel, weel I ken what will happen. We will pairt with sore hearts, but a firm meaning to be just the same to ane anither. I’ve seen a heap of things in my lifetime,’ said Janet, with mournful pride. ‘Sae has my man; but they havena time to think—they’re no’ aye turning things ower and ower like a woman at the fireside. I’ve seen mony changes and pairtings, and how it was aye said it should make no difference. Eh! I’ve seen that in the maist natural way. It’s no’ that you’ll mean ony unfaithfulness, my bonnie woman. Na, na. I ken ye to the bottom o’ your heart, and there’s nae unfaithfulness in you—no’ even to him,’ said Janet, indicating Halliday half contemptuously by a pointing finger, ‘much less to your grandfaither and me. I’m whiles in an ill key, and I’ve been sae, I dinna deny it, since ever I heard this awfu’ news: but now I am coming to mysel’. Ye’ll do your duty, Joyce. Ye’ll accept what canna be refused, and ye’ll gang away from us with a sair heart, and it will be a’ settled that you’re to come back, maybe twice a year, maybe ance a year, to Peter and me, and be our ain bairn again. They’re no’ ill folk,’ she went on, the tears dropping upon her apron, on which she was folding hem after hem—‘they’re good folk; they’re kind, awfu’ kind—they’ll never wish ye to be ungrateful,—that’s what they’ll say. They’ll no’ oppose it, they’ll settle it a’—maybe a week, maybe a month, maybe mair; they’ll be real weel-meaning, real kind. And Peter and me, we’ll live a’ the year thinking o’ that time; and ye’ll come back, my bonnie dear—oh, ye’ll come back! with your heart licht to think of the pleasure of the auld folk. But, eh Joyce! ye’ll no’ be in the house a moment till ye’ll see the difference; ye’ll no’ have graspit my hand or looked me in the face till ye see the difference. Ye’ll see the glaur on your grandfaither’s shoon when he comes in, and the sweat on his brow. No’ with ony unkind meaning. Oh, far frae that—far frae that! Do I no’ ken your heart? But ye’ll be used to other things—it’ll a’ have turned strange to ye then—and ye’ll see where we’re wanting. Oh, ye’ll see it! It will just be mair plain to ye than all the rest. The wee bit place, the common things, the neebors a’ keen to ken, but chief of us, Peter and me our ainsels, twa common puir folk.’
‘Granny!’ cried Joyce, flinging herself upon her, unable to bear this gradual working up.
Peter came in with a chorus with his big broken laugh— ‘Ay, ay, just that, just that! an auld broken-down ploughman and his puir auld body of a wife. It’s just that, it’s just that!’