“You have just not as much heart as would lie on a sixpence, to ask me such a question. There’s your father will be just like you. He will think nothing about it. He will think I should just give ye up as I took ye; the one as pleasant as the other. Oh, it is very little that folk kens, when they begin, how it’s to end.”
“But I suppose,” said Marion, “you would like us to have the advantage now that he has come home? You never expected we were just to bide on with you.”
“Oh, no, I never expected it: I’m no just a fool for all the way that ye set up your little neb to me.”
“Well,” said Marion, “then what have ye to complain of, Aunty Jane? You knew all the time: it was always his meaning to come home; and ye have always spoken about it. Bot Archie and me, we’ve learned to look forward to it; and ye would like us to lose all the advantage now!”
“It’s you that just canna understand. It’s maybe not your fault. I was very muckle taken up with mysel’ and what I had to put on, when I was your age. No your mother: she was aye different. It’s me rather that you’re like—for all that ye’ll think shame to speak to me in the street three months after this day.”
“What for should I think shame to speak to you,” said Marion; “for everybody knows ye belong to us, Aunty Jane? There would be no reason for that: we cannot hide it if we wanted to hide it. It would just be bringing odium on ourselves.”
“And that’s a’ ye have to say?”
“What more should I say? I’ll just go and take off the skirt, and run round to Miss Peebles about the body; for between this and Tuesday there’s very little time.”
“There is none to lose, that’s true. Ye had better tell her that ye want it on Monday night, for they’re never to be lippen’t to, thae mantua-makers.”
“That will be the best way.” But perhaps she felt a little compunctious; for she paused at the door to throw a look back and a word. “I think ye may make your mind easy, Aunty Jane, that papa will not do a shabby thing either to us or to you.”