"Yes; I am here with Mrs Deane and her daughter."
"That girrl that was so impertinent to me just now?--pretending to cock her nose at a Deputy Minister! Set her up!"
"Miss Deane is an heiress and a beauty. All the men in Chicago were wild about her last winter. She did not mean to offend you, I am sure; though perhaps she is a little spoilt by all the attention she receives."
"An heiress, is she? And these will all be heiresses too, maybe? They're forward and saucy enough for that or anything," she added, tossing her head at the retiring figures trooping away to overtake Lettice, and leaving the old woman, whose good-humour they had worn out, standing alone with Rose. "If it was you, now, I would be proud to hear that ye were an heiress, and to know you. Ye've got spurrit; and I'm sure ye have sense as well as good looks. Ye're not so young as thae light-headed tawpies, with their empty laughs, that have gone out just now, but you're just in your prime."
"I am five-and-twenty," said Rose, with a twinkle of dawning mischief.
"That's within two years of the age I was myself when I was married. It would be just one like you that I could welcome to my bosom, for a daughter," and she looked graciously in the other's face, to accept the answering look of gratitude which she felt was her due. "It's a sore responsibeelity, I can tell you, to a right-thinking mother, to get her only son--and such a son!--properly settled in life. They've no sense, even the best of men, when it comes to choosing a wife. There's a glamour comes over them, and they just fall a prey to some designing cuttie that has nothing but the duds she stands in, and neither sense nor experience. But I mean to stand between my boay and that misfortune, at any rate."
"He must feel deeply indebted to you."
"I don't know if he does, my dear. The men are contrar' cattle, and very thrawn. But I have my duty to do. He's my objeck in life. I left home to come out and live with him in a foreign land; and that was no small sacrifice at my time of life, I can tell you. It's true he has a fine piseetion and a good income; but if ye had seen the way he was being put upon, and the waste, when I came out to look after him, it would have made your hair stand up. A whole peck of pitaities biled every day for wan man's dinner! The cook's mother kept pigs, ye see. That's where the pitaities went. But I made a cleen sweep, I can tell you."
"It must have been rather trying to you."
"Eh yes! it's been very hard upon my nerves. I'm not strong; though perhaps ye wouldn't think it. My colour's so good that nobody will believe there's much the matter with me. But my heart's affecket, my dear. If you could just feel the palpitations--thump--thump--like a smiddie hammer! ever since thae girrls with their jawing went out,"--and she laid her hand upon her ample chest and closed her eyes.