“Oh, but it’s all mixed up––and my best friend doesn’t 426 know the truth. Yes, take the letter, Aunt Ellen, and read it yourself.” She held out the pages with a shaking hand, and Jean took them over to her sister, who slowly read them in silence.
“Ah, noo. As I tell’t ye, it’s no so bad,” she said at last.
“Wha’s the trouble, Ellen? Don’t keep us waitin’.”
“Bide ye in patience, child. Ye’re always so easily excitet. I maun read the letter again to get the gist o’t, but it’s like this. The Elder’s been of the opeenion noo these three years that his son was most foully murder’t, an––”
“He may ha’e been kill’t, but he was no’ murder’t,” cried Jean, excitedly. “I tell ye ’twas purely by accident––” she paused and suddenly clapped both hands over her mouth and rocked herself back and forth as if she had made some egregious blunder, then: “Gang on wi’ yer tellin’. It’s dour to bide waitin’. Gie me the letter an’ lat me read it for mysel’.”
“Lat me tell’t as I maun tell’t. Ye maun no keep interruptin’. Jean has no order in her brain. She aye pits the last first an’ the first last. This is a hopefu’ letter an’ a guid ain from yer friend, an’ it tells ye yer son’s leevin’ an’ no murder’t––”
“Thank the Lord! I ha’e aye said it,” ejaculated Jean, fervently.
“Ye ha’e aye said it? Child, what mean ye? Ye ha’e kenned naethin’ aboot it.”
But Jean would not be set down. She leaned forward with glistening eyes. “I ha’e aye said it. I ha’e aye said it. Gie me the letter, Ellen.”
But Ellen only turned composedly and resumed her interpretation 427 of the letter to Hester, who sat looking with dazed expression from one aunt to the other.