“A decent man, with a wife and seven children,” said Miss Bell.
“Decent or not, he'll not be coming back borrowing from me in a hurry. I set him off with a flea in his lug.”
“We're not needing curtains,” said Miss Bell, hurriedly; “the pair we have are fine.”
Dan finished his breakfast that day with a smile, flicked the crumbs off his waistcoat, gave one uneasy glance at Ailie, and went off to business humming “There is a Happy Land.”
“Oh, dear me, I'm afraid he's growing a perfect miser,” moaned Bell, when she heard the door close behind him. “He did not use to be like that when he was younger and poorer. Money's like the toothache, a commanding thing.”
Ailie smiled. “If you went about as much as I do, Bell,” she said, “you would not be misled by Dan's pretences. And as for Black, the baker, I saw his wife in Miss Minto's yesterday buying boots for her children and a bonnet for herself. She called me Miss Ailie, an honor I never got from her in all my life before.”
“Do you think—do you think he gave Black the money?” said Bell, in a pleasant excitation.
“Of course he did. It's Dan's way to give it to some folk with a pretence of reluctance, for if he did not growl they would never be off his face! He's telling us about the lecture that accompanied it as a solace to our femininity. Women, you know, are very bad lenders, and dislike the practice in their husbands and brothers.”
“None of the women I know,” protested Bell. “They're just as free-handed as the men if they had it. I hope,” she added, anxiously, “that Dan got good security. Would it be a dear bonnet, now, that she was getting?”
Ailie laughed—a ridiculous sort of sister this; she only laughed.