“Miss Lily, Miss Lily, we thought it was for the best. Oh, we thought it was for the best, both Katrin and me! For God’s sake dinna make an exhibition before Miss Eelen! Here she is, coming up the stair. For peety’s sake, Miss Lily, for a’ body’s sake, if ye have ainy consideration——”
“Go away from me, you ill woman!” cried Lily, stamping her foot on the ground. She stood in the middle of the room, wild and flushed and indignant, while Beenie disappeared into the bedchamber within. Helen Blythe, coming up a little breathless from the spiral staircase, paused with astonishment to see her friend’s excited aspect, and the sounds of tempest in the air.
“Dear me! have I come in at a wrong time?” Helen said.
“Oh, no,” cried Lily, with a laugh of fierce emotion, “at the very best time, just to bring me back to myself. I’ve been having a quarrel with Beenie just for a little diversion. We’ve been at it hammer and tongs, calling each other all the bonnie names—or perhaps it was me that called her all the names. How do you think we could live out here in the quiet and the snow if we did not have a quarrel sometimes to keep up our hearts?”
“Lily, you are a strange lassie,” said Helen, sitting down by the fire and loosening her cloak. “You just say whatever comes into your head. Poor Beenie! how could you have the heart to call her names? She is just given up to ye, my dear, body and soul.”
“She is no better than a cheat and a deceiver!” cried Lily. “She makes folk believe that she does what I tell her, and never opposes me, when she just sets herself against her mistress to do every thing I hate and nothing I like, as if she were a black enemy and ill-wisher instead of a friend!”
This speech was delivered with great fervor, and emphasized by the sound of a sob from the inner room.
“Poor Beenie!” cried Helen with mingled amusement and concern, “how is she to take all that from you, Lily? But you do not mean it in your heart?”
“No, I don’t mean a word of it,” cried Lily, “and it’s just an old goose she is if she thinks I do! But for all that she is the most exasperating woman! I never saw any body like her to be faithful as all the twelve apostles, and yet make you dance for rage half the time.”
A faint “Oh, Miss Lily!” was heard from the inner room, and then a door was softly opened and shut, and it was evident that Beenie had slipped away.