“I can understand that,” said Miss Bell, with a patriot’s fervour; “there’s nothing like the Scotch for any of them; I fall to it myself when I’m sentimental. And so does your Uncle Dan.”
“She says she’s the last of the real Macintoshes,—that all the rest you see on Edinburgh signboards are only incomers or poor de-degenerate cadets; and I guess the way she says it, being a de-degenerate cadet Macintosh must be the meanest thing under the cope and canopy. Heaps of those old ancestors of hers went out in the days of the clans, fighting for any royalty that happened along. She’s got all their hair in lockets, and makes out that when they disappeared Scotland got a pretty hard knock. I said to her once the same as Aunt Ailie says to you, Aunt Bell, ‘English and Scots, I s’pose we’re all God’s people, and it’s a terribly open little island to be quarrelling in, seeing all the Continent can hear us quite plain’; but she didn’t like it. She said it was easy seen I didn’t understand the dear old Highland mountains, where her great-great-grandfather, Big John of the Axe, could collect five hundred fighting-men if he wagged a fiery cross at them. ‘I have Big John’s blood in me!’ she said, quite white, and her head shaking so much her preserves nearly fell off her nose. ‘I’ve Big John’s blood in me; and when I think of things, I hate the very name o’ thae aboaminable English!’ ‘Why, you’ve never seen them, Miss Macintosh,’ I said—for I knew she’d never had a foot outside Scotland. ‘No,’ said she, quite sharp, ‘and I don’t want to; for they might be nice enough, and then I wad be bound to like them.’”
“Oh, Bell!” cried Ailie, laughing, “Miss Macintosh is surely your doppelganger.”
“I don’t know what a doppelganger is,” said Auntie Bell; “but she’s a real sensible body, and fine I would like to see her.”
“Then I’ll have to fix it somehow,” said Bud, with emphasis. “P’raps you’ll meet her when you come to Edinburgh—”
“I’m not there yet, my dear.”
“—Or she might be round this way by-and-by. She’d revel in this place; she’d maybe not call it quaint, but she’d find it pretty careless about being in the—in the modern rush she talks about, and that would make her happier than a letter from home. I believe The Macintosh—”
“Miss Macintosh, my dear,” said Bell reprovingly, and the girl reddened.
“I know,” said she. “It’s mean to talk of her same as she was a waterproof, and I often try not to, because I like her immensely; but it’s so common among the girls that I forget. I believe Miss Macintosh would love this place, and could stop in it for ever.”
“Couldn’t you?” asked Auntie Ailie slyly.