“Take me there!” I said, “for I must tell my grandmother what I have seen of you, or she will be up here by the coach red and angry enough to dry up the Nor’ Loch!”
Irma walked by my side quite silent for a while, and I led her cunningly so as not to get too soon to our destination. I knew better than to ask why she had left Heathknowes. If I let her alone, she would soon enough begin to defend herself. And so it was.
“The lawyers took Louis away to put him to a school here,” she said. “It was time. I knew it, but I could not rest down there without him. So I came also. I left them all last Wednesday. Your grandmother came herself with me to Dumfries, and there we saw the lawyers. They had not much to say to your grandmother, while she——”
“I understand,” said I; “she had a great deal to say to them!”
Irma nodded, and for the first time faintly smiled.
“Yes,” she answered, “the little old man in the flannel dressing-gown, of whom you used to tell us, forgot to poke the fire for a long time!”
“So you left them all in good heart about your coming away?” I said.
“Oh, the good souls,” she cried, weeping a little at the remembrance, “never will I see the like till I am back there again. I think they all loved me—even your Aunt Jen. She gave me her own work-basket and a psalm book bound in black leather when I came away.”
And at the remembrance she wept afresh.
“I must stop this,” she said, dabbing her eyes with a very early-April smile, “my Aunt Kirkpatrick will think it is because of meeting you. She is always free with her imagination, my Lady Kirkpatrick—a clever woman for all that—only, what is it that you say, ‘hard and fyky!’ She has seen many great people and kings, and was long counted a great beauty without anything much coming of it.”