"She is no that ill after a', if you consider that she keeps us," she said.
Kit did not know that Vara had known intimately a far worse woman than Mistress McWalter.
At the door Kit gave the cans of water to Vara, brimming full as he had carried them, but silently, lest his aunt should hear from her bed above. He touched Vara's hand lightly for reward. For he was a boy as full of sentiment as his books were primed with it. He had brought a dozen of his father's volumes with him, and though his aunt daily prophesied their destruction by fire, Kit thought that she knew better than to do that.
But, while Vara had been gone to the well for the water, momentous things had been happening in the privacy of the chamber shared by Mistress McWalter and her husband. The worm had turned. But, alas! even when worms turn, they do not gain much by it. Except that perhaps they may assist the early bird to wriggle down its breakfast a little more easily.
Mistress McWalter had gone storming along her devious way of abuse after Vara's departure.
"I wish ye wad let that lassie alane!" suddenly broke in John McWalter, awaking out of his deep silence at the thirtieth repetition of the phrase "impident madam of the street." "The lassie's weel eneuch, so far as I see, gin ye wad only let her alane!"
For a long minute Mistress McWalter lay petrified with astonishment. The like of this had not happened since six months after their marriage. But the checked tide of her speech was not long in overflowing the barrier like a bursting flood.
"Is't come to this between you an' me, John McWalter—that I may rise and pack, and tak' awa me and my bairns, puir harmless bits o' things? For it comes to that! After a' my thirty years aboot the hoose o' Loch Spellanderie, that ye should tak' the pairt o' a reckless randy gang-the-road trollop, against your ain married wife! Have I watched and tended ye for this, when ye had the trouble in your inside, and could get rest neither day nor nicht, you wantin' aye mustard plaisters? Is it to be lichtlied for a lichtfit rantipole limmer that I hae fed ye and clad ye—aye, and tended your bairns, washing them back and front ilka Saturday nicht wi' a bit o' flannel and guid yellow soap, forby drying them after that wi' a rough towel? And noo, since I am to hae a besom like this preferred before me—I'll rise and be gaun. I'll bide nae mair aboot this hoose. Guid be thanked there's them in the warld that thinks mair o' me than John McWalter, my ain marriet man!"
"Aye, juist na," said John McWalter, roused at last. "E'en gang your ways, Mistress, if ye can make a better o't. Ye're braw and welcome to trampit as far as this hoose is concerned. I'm thinkin' that your new freends will be brave and sune tired o' ye!"
Mistress McWalter bounced out of bed and began hurriedly to gather her apparel, as though she meditated leaving the house just as she was. She would have given a considerable sum of money if at that moment she could have wept real wet tears. However, she did her best with a dry towel.