Bell, however, was very much bewildered by the hasty, incoherent little epistle which she received in reply to hers, which had contained the letter of Rob Glen. “If you see Mr. Randal Burnside, will you ask him to speak to Mr. Glen? Say I told you to ask him, dear Bell; oh, be sure I said you were to ask him! and Mr. Randal will understand.” What did this mean? Bell grew frightened, and for her part could not understand. The first step in the matter had been strange enough: that Rob Glen should have ventured to forward a letter to Miss Margaret, was of itself a strange and inexplicable fact. But it might be, as he said, about his picture; it might be about some price which old Sir Ludovic had offered. In such circumstances writing might be necessary, and he might not like, perhaps, to write to “the ladies themselves.” But Margaret’s message made the mystery more mysterious still. It confounded Bell so much that she said nothing about it to John, but wrote with much trouble and pain another letter, begging her young lady “not to trouble her bonnie head about young men; but to leave them to themselves, as being another kind of God’s creatures, innocent enough in their way, but not the best of company for bonnie young ladies like her darling.”
When, however, Bell had entered this protest, she immediately bent her mind to the due carrying out of Margaret’s request. Randal had adopted the habit of coming over from Edinburgh in the end of the week and staying till Monday, a praiseworthy habit which his mother much encouraged, and of which she too spoke with tears in her eyes (so weak are women!) as proving her son to be the very best son in the world, and the very prop and staff of old age to “the doctor and me.” It was true enough that he was the delight and support of the old couple in the Manse, of whom one was as yet not particularly old. And if Randal was fond of golf, and arranged “a foursome” for all the Saturdays of his visits, upon the Links which were within reach, in what respect did that affect the matter? A man may be a “keen golfer,” let us hope, and a very good son as well.
“Is there ony news at the Kirkton?” Bell said, when John came in, throwing off an old furred coat that had been old Sir Ludovic’s; for John’s bones were getting cranky with rheumatism, and his blood thin, as happens to every man. The fur glistened as he came into the warm room with his breath, which the cold without had fixed like beads upon every little hair. John put it away carefully on its peg, and came “into” the fire, and put himself into his big wooden arm-chair before he replied—
“Naething of consequence; there’s a change o’ the ministry looked for afore lang, but that’s been maistly aye the case as lang as I can mind. Either they’re gaun out, or they’re coming in; they’re a’ much alike as far as I can see.”
“I wouldna say that,” said Bell, who was more of a partisan than her husband. “There’s our ain side—and there’s the tither side, and our ain’s muckle the best. It’s them I would stand by through thick and thin— I’m nane o’ your indifferent masses,” said the old woman; “but it wasna politics I was thinking of. Did you see naebody that you and me kens?”
“Naebody that you and me kens? I saw a’ body that you and me kens,” said John, taking a very large mouthful of the vowel, which he pronounced aw—“first Katie and her man, just in their ordinar; and syne John Robertson at his door, complaining that he never could find Jeanie; and syne John Armstrong at the smiddy, very strang, shoeing ane of Sir Claude’s horses that’s to hunt the morn; and syne—”
“Touts, I dinna want a dictionary,” said Bell, probably meaning directory; “naebody mair particular than John here and John there? as if I was wanting a list o’ a’ the Johns! Weel I wat there’s plenty o’ ye, young and auld, and great and sma’.”
“Is’t the wives you’re so keen about? I can tell ye naething o’ the women; there were few about the doors at this time o’ the night, and them just taupies, that would have been mair in their place, getting ready their man’s supper, or putting their bairns to their beds.”
“Eh, man John, but ye’ve awfu’ little invention,” said Bell. “If it had been me that had been to the Kirkton, I would have heard some story or other to divert you with that were biding at hame. But ye canna get mair out of a man than Providence has put intill him,” she said, with a sigh of resignation; then added, as by a sudden thought, “You wouldna see ony of the Manse family about?”
“Ay did I,” said John, provoked to hear any doubt thrown upon his capacity of seeing the Manse family. “I saw the gig trundling up the bit little avenue with Mr. Randal and his little portmanteau that I could have carried in ae hand. But Robert’s just a useless creature that will have out a horse for naething, sooner than up with a bit small affair upon his shoulder and carry ’t. It’s bad for the horse and it’s worse for the man, to let him go on in such weirdless ways.”