“Quick, quick, Miss Marjory,” said Betty, at the door. The door was in the gable, and opened into a square hall, which was underneath the drawing-room. “Quick, like good bairns, and dinna keep your aunty waiting. The broth’s ready to come up, and Jessie making a terrible fyke in the kitchen—and Miss Jean’s no pleased.”
She threw open the door of a little bedroom at the end of the passage as she spoke—it was thought convenient in that region to have sleeping rooms on the ground-floor—and began instantly to take off Milly’s outer jacket, which was worn over her long riding-skirt. May smoothed her own hair with a trepidation which was quite unusual to her. It was bright brown hair, not so blond as Milly’s, but still full of soft colour, though not red, nor even golden. Her eyes were brown too, large and serious, but capable of lighting up with searching golden gleams. She was softly coloured in every way, with an evanescent bloom that came and went, and the most changeable of faces. Sometimes strangers thought her almost plain, when her upper lip fixed on her lower with the resolute look she sometimes had, and her eyes looked straight before her full of silent thought. But most people who knew Marjory held it impossible that she could ever be plain. She smoothed her hair as best she could, in her hurry, for those were the days when young ladies were expected to have smooth and shining hair—and put her tall hat and her riding gloves on the table, and pulled out her handkerchief from her bodice. “Am I tidy, Betty; shall I do?” asked, with tremulous accents, the young woman who half an hour before had felt herself princess of Comlie. All these pleasant pretensions failed before the tribunal of Miss Jean.
“Oh, ay, Miss Marjory, you’ll do,” cried anxious Betty; and attended as ever closely by her little sister, Marjory ran upstairs. Miss Jean sat in the end window, her favourite seat of inspection—and all her “borders,” which were of blonde, not so closely put together as those of Mrs. Murray, were quivering round her old face. “So you’ve come at last, Miss May,” she said. “It’s a great honour to my humble house, and folk that are gratified with the visits of their betters must be content to wait.”
“Oh, Aunt Jean, I am very sorry! We ought to have come here at once, instead of going to the Manse—”
“Far be it from me to say what a young lady like you should do. I’m nothing but an old-fashioned person myself. In my days the young were brought up to obedience and consideration of other folks’ ways. But I’m not a learned man like the doctor, nor a whillie-wha like the doctor’s wife. I’m of the old Hay-Heriot stock, that always spoke their mind. Betty, bring ben the broth—if our young ladies can sup broth. They tell me my nephew Charlie has brought a grand cook to the house, far above our old-fashioned Scots dishes.”
“Indeed, Aunt Jean, it is the old dishes she is famous for,” said May, very conciliatory. “She says she knows nothing about kickshaws, and one of the things I specially wanted was to ask you for the old family receipt for shortbread, which you always promised me, and your particular fish and sauce, which Uncle Charles says is the best he ever tasted.”
“I suppose you think you can win me over with your nonsense about fish and sauce,” said Miss Jean. “Set Charlie up with his cooks and his newfangled ways! In my days a man ate what was set before him, and said his grace, and was thankful. The mistress of a house, with all her family to provide for, might be excused for giving her mind to it; but, ugh! a man studying what he’s to put into his vile stomach! If there’s a thing I cannot abide—Dinner’s ready! You need not tell me that; it’s been ready any time this twenty minutes. You may say to Jess I’m truly sorry for her, but it’s our young ladies’ way. Go first, bairn, and go quick, for I’ll not wait another moment, if it was for the Queen herself.”
Thus adjured, Milly ran downstairs, followed by her sister. The old lady brought up the rear, with her big cane. She was a little old woman over seventy, in a large cap with many ribbons and borders of broad blonde, which waved about her withered face as she moved. It was a small face, much shrivelled up, but lighted with two blazing sparks of light, deeply sunk within the eaves and folds of her eyelids—eyes which could see what happened a mile off, and burn through and through any unfortunate who was subjected to their gaze. She wore a red China crape shawl, very old, but once very richly embroidered and handsome, on her thin shoulders, and her short footstep and the tap of her cane rang through the house as she moved. Everybody within her range increased their exertions, and moved with doubled activity when the tap of Miss Jean’s cane became audible.
As for Milly, running on before, her aunt was to her as the exacting, but, on the whole, benevolent fairy who appears in all the tales, who scolded Cinderella, yet gave her the pumpkin coach, and who had drawers upon drawers full of shreds and patches, strings of beads, bright bits of silk, everything that was necessary for the dressing of dolls and making of needlebooks. The pat-pat of the cane seemed part of the old lady to Milly’s ear, and she was by no means sure that the cane was not a third leg upon which Aunt Jean moved as ordinary mortals did on the more usual complement. No one except Miss Jean said a word as they sat down to table, and Betty, with a speed and noiselessness, which were born at once of terror and of long practice, served the broth. Milly said they were very good, and asked for a little more of them, without any perception that she was ungrammatical, and as they were hot and savoury Miss Jean mollified by degrees.
“There’s one good thing,” she said, “that you cannot spoil broth by waiting. That and porridge should always be well boiled. I hope your grand cook knows that among her other accomplishments. But, maybe Milly is above porridge, though her father was brought up upon them, and his father before him, and all the best Scots gentry from the days of Robert Bruce.”