* * * * *
The days slipped away and March came and David was home again; such a smart David in new clothes and (like Shakespeare's Town Clerk) "everything handsome about him."
He immediately began to entice Jean into spending money. It was absurd, he said, to have no one but Mrs. M'Cosh: a smart housemaid must be got.
"She would only worry Mrs. M'Cosh," Jean protested "and there isn't room for another maid, and I hate smart maids anyway. I like to help in the house myself."
"But that's so absurd," said David, "with all your money. You should enjoy life now."
"Yes," said Jean meekly, "but smart maids wouldn't help me to—quite the opposite…. And don't you get ideas into your head about smartness, Davie. The Rigs could never be smart: you must go to The Towers for that. So long as we live at The Rigs we must be small plain people. And I hope I shall live here all my life—and so that's that!"
David, greatly exasperated, bounded from his chair the better to harangue his sister.
"Jean, anybody would think you were a hundred to hear you talk! You'll get nothing out of life except perhaps a text on your tombstone, 'She hath done what she could,' and that's a dull prospect…. Why aren't you more like other girls? Why don't you do your hair the new way, all sort of—oh, I don't know, and wear earrings … you know you don't dress smartly."
"No," said Jean.
"And you haven't any tricks. I mean you don't try and attract attention to yourself."