“A job it is that you’re very apt to have raison to repent of,” Mrs. Mackay said severely, “if so be you had act or part in it.”
“Is it me?” Mrs. Hugh said, and laughed derisively. “Raving you are, if that’s your notion. A great chance I’d have to be meddling or making with it, and I stuck up here out of reach of everything. I only wisht I’d been at our own place to get a better sight.”
“How can I tell what chances you have or haven’t, and you after running wild through the country for better than a couple of hours?” Mrs. Mackay said. “Plenty of time had you for the matter, to be skyting there and back twice over, if you was up to any sort of mischief; let alone going about talking and threatening, and carrying on, till everybody in the parish is safe to be of the opinion yourself was contriving it with whoever done it, supposing you didn’t do it all out. And it’s the quare trouble you might very aisy get yourself into for that same, let me tell you. There was a man at Joe’s place that got three years for being concerned in setting a light to a bit of an old shed, no size to speak of; so, if the next thing we see of you is walking off between a pair of police constables, yourself you’ll have to thank for it. I only hope poor Hugh won’t be blaming me for letting you out of me sight this evening.”
“Och, good luck to yourself and your pólis!” Mrs. Hugh said, defiantly. “It’s little I care who lit the old rick, and its little I care what any people’s troubling theirselves to think about it. I’d liefer be after doing it than not—so there’s for you. But what I won’t do is stop here listening to your fool’s romancing. So good-night to you kindly.”
With that Mrs. Hugh flounced clattering up the little steep stairs, and hurled herself like a compressed earthquake-wave into her bedroom. Mrs. Mackay, following her, stumped along more slowly. “Goodness forgive me for saying so,” she reflected, “but Julia’s a terrific woman to have any doings or dealings with. She’s not to hold or bind when she takes the notion, and the dear knows what she’s been up to now; something outrageous most likely. The Lord Chief Justice himself couldn’t control her. Beyond me she is entirely.”
Nevertheless, her warnings were not without effect, and at their next interview, she found her sister in a meeker mood.
It was when Mrs. Mackay was in the cowhouse milking, before breakfast, that Julia appeared to her, hurrying in with a demeanour full of dismay. “Och, Bridgie, what will I do?” she said.
“What’s happint you now?” Bridgie replied, with a studied want of sympathy.
“I’m just after looking out of me window,” Julia said, “and there’s two of the pólis out of the barracks below standing at the roadgate, having great discoursing with Dan Molloy, and about coming into this place they are. Ne’er a bit of me knows what’s bringing them so outlandish early; but I’ll take me oath, Bridgie darlint, I’d nought to do, good or bad, with burning the rick. It might ha’ went on fire of itself. Hand nor part I hadn’t in it. So you might be telling them that to your certain knowledge I was up here the whole time, and sending them about their business—there’s a good woman.”
On further reflection Mrs. Mackay had already concluded that Julia probably was not guilty of incendiarism; still, she considered her sister’s alarmed state a favourable opportunity for a lesson on the expediency of behaving herself. Therefore she was careful to give no reassuring response.