“Eh, my bonnie misses,” cried Beenie, “who am I that I should explain my mistress’s dark sayings? I am just a servant, and ken nothing but what’s said to me by the higher powers.”
There was what Beenie afterward explained as “a cackle o’ laughing” over these words, which were just like Beenie, the girls said. “But what do you know from the higher powers? And why, why is Lily to be snatched away?” they said. Robina softly pushed her way through them with the superior weight of her bigness. “Ye must just ask herself, for it is beyond me,” she said.
Lily rushed after her as soon as the visitors were gone, pale with expectation. “Oh, Beenie, what did he say?” she cried.
“What did who say, Miss Lily? for I do not catch your meaning,” said the faithful maid.
“Do you mean to say that you did not go down stairs——”
“Yes, Miss Lily, I went down the stairs.”
“To see my uncle?” said the girl. “I know you saw my uncle. I heard your voice murmuring, though they all talked at once. Oh, Beenie, Beenie, what did he say?”
“Since you will have it, Miss Lily, I did just see Sir Robert. There was nobody but me in the way, and I saw your uncle. He was in a very good key after that grand dish of Scots collops. So I thought I would just ask him if it was true.”
“And what did he say?”
Beenie shook her head and said, “No,” in dumb show with her pursed-out lips. “He just said it was your own doing, and not his,” she added, after this impressive pantomime.