“I did not think you cared for suppers and teas,” he said. “The last time you went to the Sheriffs you said you would far sooner be at home, and—”
“Did I?” said she. Then she smiled to find some one who knew it was not the outing she immediately prized. “Indeed, what you say is true, Gilian. I’m an old done dame, and it was wiser for the like of me to be sitting knitting at the fire than going on diverts to their bohea parties and clashing supper tables. But it’s not myself I’m angry for. Oh, no! they might leave me alone for ever and a day and I would care not a pin-head, but it’s Dugald I’m thinking of—a Major-General—one of the only three in the shire, and Colin—a Cornal—and both of Keils. The Sheriff’s lady might leave me out of her routs if she pleasured it, but she has no cause to put my brothers to an insult like this.” She said “my brothers” with a high hard sound of stern and proud possession that was very fine to hear. Even Gilian, as yet only beginning to know the love and pride of this little woman, had, at her accent, a sudden deep revealing of her devoted heart.
“It is the Turners’ doing,” she said, feverishly rubbing a warming pan whose carved lid from Zaandam blinked and gleamed like the shining face of a Dutch skipper over his dram. “I know them; because my brother must be quarrelling with them, their half-sister must be taking up the quarrel and shutting her door in our faces.”
“The Turners! Then I hate them too,” cried Gilian, won to the Paymaster’s side by the sorrow of Miss Mary.
“Oh, you must not say that, my dear,” she cried, appalled. “It is not your affair at all, and the Turners are not to blame because the Sheriff is under the thumb of his madam. The Turners have their good points as well as the rest of us, and—”
“They have a daughter,” said Gilian, almost unconsciously, for there had come flooding into his mind a vision of the sombre vessel’s cabin, shot over by a ray of sunshine, wherein a fairy sang of love and wandering. And then he regretted he had spoke of hate for any of her name, for surely (he thought) there should be no hate in the world for any that had her blood and shared her home.
Surely in her people, knowing her so warm, so lovely, so kind, so gifted, there could be no cruelty and wrong.
“I would not say I hated any one if I were you, my dear,” said Miss Mary; “but I would keep a cool side to the Turners, father, or daughter, or son. Their daughter that you speak of was the cause of this new quarrel. The Captain miscalled her to her father, which was not right, for indeed she’s a bonny lassie, and they tell me she sings—”
“Like the mavis,9’ cried Gilian, still in his Gaelic and in a transport of recollection.
“Where did you hear her?” asked Miss Mary.