"Elizabeth Briggs! Elizabeth Briggs! What is all this play-acting? And what gangrel loon is this that ye are bringing to the door by the hand? Is there not enough wastry and ruination aboot the house of Rascarrel already, without your wiling hame every gypsy's brat and prowling sorrow of a gutter-bluid? Think shame o' yoursel', Elizabeth Briggs!"
Hugh Boy dropped the hand which held his. He would not bring disgrace on the friend who had helped him.
"Aunt Robina, you forget yourself," interposed the young lady with prim dignity, "and you forget 'what sayeth the Scripture.'"
She took Boy Hugh's hand again, and held it tighter. "Forget the Scripture," cried a tall dark-browed woman who came limping out from a seat under a weeping elm. She was leaning heavily with both hands upon a staff, which she rattled angrily on the ground as she spoke.
"Yes," said Miss Briggs, "do you not know that I am Pharaoh's daughter, and this is little Moses that I drew out of the water?"
"Hold your tongue, Elizabeth Briggs, and come here instantly!" said the dark woman, tapping the ground again with her staff.
Hugh Boy knew the tone. He had heard something like this before.
"Is that your 'awfu' woman'?" he said aloud, pointing with his finger at the woman leaning upon the stick.
"Elizabeth Briggs," she commanded again, pointing at the little girl with her stick, "come in to your lesson this minute. And you, whatever you may call yourself, take yourself off at once or I'll get the police to you!"
"Yes, do go away, nice little boy," said Miss Briggs; "but when you grow big, come back to the house of Rascarrel and Miss Briggs will marry you. And I will give you another kiss at the garden stile—and so will Peter!" she added. For she felt that some extra kindness and attention was due from her, to make up for the most unscriptural hardheartedness of her Aunt Robina.