Mrs Naylor grew positively nervous, and even began to feel an anticipatory pity for her daughter, in the prospect of so tumultuous a mother-in-law--when, quite unexpectedly, the truants drove up to the door.
"Peter, you rascal!" his mother exclaimed, jumping up and running down-stairs to meet him. "You've nearly been the death of me;" and, to demonstrate how much she had suffered, so soon as she came within range of his supporting arms, she pressed both hands upon her "palpitation," crying, "Oh!" and made as if she would fall.
Peter caught her as intended, and supported her up to her room, not soothing her, by any means, but scolding her roundly, in good set terms; but then he had known her for many years, and understood her idiosyncrasies. Doubtless his system was the right one. Soothing would only have encouraged her to rave and do the scolding herself, till her palpitations came on in earnest. He was an excellent son, whatever his shortcomings in other respects might be; and there are constitutions which require what their medical advisers might call "bracing treatment," just as others agree with bland and soothing remedies.
"Well, Peter?" she asked, with impatient eagerness, so soon as they were closeted together, in complete forgetfulness of the scene which she had been enacting the minute before--forgetting her incipient faintness, and likewise the rough restoratives which had been applied. "Have ye done it?"
"Done what, mother?"
"You know very well what I mean. Have ye promised to marry that girl down-stairs?"
"I have not."
She heaved a great sigh of relief; but she went on with her catechism. "How's that? I never saw ye more taken up with anybody. Ye stuck to her like a burr the livelong day; and many were the envious glances I saw some others casting after you two, as ye went dandering over the hills like a pair of lovers. I was sure ye were nabbet--just grippet and done for like a wired rabbit; and, says I to myself, there's wan of the simple wans that love simplicity, and she's just inveigled him into makin' her an offer."
"She doesn't want to inveigle me. She is provided already. She did not give me the chance to make a fool of myself, like your young friend in the Proverbs, whom you are so fond of talking about. She availed herself of my escort to bring her to a man she liked better than me; that was all."
"The besom! She took her use out of ye, and let ye slide? Do ye mean to tell me that, Peter Wilkie? And are ye going to stand it? Have ye nothing more to say than just stand like a gowk and own til it? Have ye no spurrit left?"