"Yes, my dear, I was admired--in my day," and the double chin went up with a snap, to join the rest of the self-complacent countenance.
"Don't say was, Mrs Wilkie," Lettice answered. "You are a dangerous woman still. It is well that mamma is with us here, to look after the old man, or--or---- Nobody knows what might happen. These old gentlemen are very susceptible."
"I don't think I am acquainted with your papaw, my dear," said the old woman, looking round the tittering circle with rising colour, and bridling as if the jest perhaps contained more truth than the scoffer wot of. "But I never was a flirt; and now, in my poseetion, one has to be careful, and set an example of propriety. But, as I was saying--and it's well for young people to know these things--you don't take proper care of yourselves in this country. You should see our Scotch complexions when we're young. Strawberries and crame--that's what we look like. But then we take a hantle care of our chairms; and we live healthy. It would be good for some Yankee girls if they were put through a course of proper conduck"--and she looked straight at Lucy Naylor, the most flagrant of the titterers--"and simple living, by one of our old Scotch grandmothers. You're for ever drinking icewater and hot tea, out here; and how can you expeck your insides to be healthy after that? And you're all the time at candies or pickles, not to speak of hot bread, and beef-steaks and pitaities for breakfast, as if ye had a day's ploughing before you--and you just lounging on soffies and easy-chairs the whole forenoon, with some bit silly novel in your hands, and nothing to exercise either the body or the intelleck. My son, the Deputy Minister of Edication, says you're just destroying yourselves."
"Tell us about him, dear Mrs Wilkie," said Lettice, cutting short the prelection. "We know our faults already, though I fear we are not likely to mend them. Tell us about the young man. That will be far more interesting. What do you call his profession? Something very long-winded and grand, I know."
"He is the Deputy Minister of Edication, for the Province. And it is a grand poseetion for so young a man, or for any man--whatever you may think. And as for being 'long-winded,' you don't understand. He doesna preach, my dear--though he could do that too, if there was occasion. It was that I bred him to. But this pays better. He has his handsome income for just sitting still in his chair and seeing that his inferiors work hard enough. And then, there's what the opposeetion papers, with their ill-scrapet tongues, call pickin's! Oh yes! there's fine pickin's. But I mustna be telling tales out o' school."
"He must be a bishop, then, Mrs Wilkie, if he does not preach. We call boss ministers bishops. Do you call them deputies in Canada? How odd of you! And yet I danced with him last night. Think of dancing with a bishop! It sounds positively profane. What a country Canada must be!"
"The lassie's in a creel! My Peter's no that kind of minister avaw. I bred him for a minister, it's true--a minister of the Gospel, and very far from the same kind with your bishops, and their white gowns, and red things hanging down their backs. It's a U.P. he would have been, if I had had my way. But Peter preferred being a minister of the Crown; and there's no denying it pays better. There's no vows laid on a minister of the Crown. They may dance, or do anything they like--and very queer things some of them do like, it seems to me. But Mis-ter Wilkie's very circumspeck. He's Deputy Minister, you see. 'Deputy' means that all the pickin's"--and she winked, poor soul--"go to him; though sometimes he has to give a share to the chief--quietly, you understand, my dears, for the chief is responsible to Parliament, and there would be a scandal if it came out. They're fond of having a scandal in Canada when politics are dull. Then the chief has to resign, but the deputy just sits still. He's a servant of the Crown, you see; so he goes on drawing his pay just the same, whatever chief the politeetians may appint over him. That comes of our having a Crown in Canada. It's a fine institution, and troubles nobody. It would be telling you Yankees if you had wan. Ye wouldn't be turned out of your comfortable offices every four years, then; and more, it would keep you steady. Ye have no respeck and no reverence here, and no nothing;" and again she looked severely in Lucy Naylor's face--that ill-regulated young person having fallen a-laughing worse than ever.
"It must be nice to be married to a Deputy Minister of the Crown," Lettice observed, demurely.
"Ye may say that; and there's more than you thinks it, I can tell you, my dear. The young girls where we come from are just pulling caps to see who is to be the wan. It's really shameless the way they behave, and many's the good laugh me and Mis-ter Wilkie has at their ongoings."
"I suppose you are to choose the successful candidate?"