"Have done your claver, Mary!" cried Margray. "One cannot hear herself think, for the din of your twittering!—I'll cut the sleeve over crosswise, I think,"—and, heedless, she herself commenced humming, in an undertone, '"Cuckoo! cuckoo!'—There! you've driven mother out!"
Mary laughed.
"When I'm married, Ailie," she whispered, "I'll sing from morn till night, and you shall sit and hear me, without Margray's glowering at us, or my mother so much as saying, 'Why do you so?'"
For all the time the song had been purling from her smiling lips, Mrs. Strathsay's eyes were laid, a weight like lead, on me, and then she had risen as if it hurt her, and walked to the door.
"Or when you've a house of your own," added Mary, "we will sing together there."
"Oh, Mary!" said I, like the child I was, forgetting the rest, "when I'm married, you will come and live with me?"
"You!" said my mother, stepping through the door and throwing the words over her shoulder as she went, not exactly for my ears, but as if the bubbling in her heart must have some vent. "And who is it would take such a fright?"
"My mother's fair daft," said Margray, looking after her with a perplexed gaze, and dropping her scissors. "Surely, Mary, you shouldn't tease her as you do. She's worn more in these four weeks than in as many years. You're a fickle changeling!"
But Mary rose and sped after my mother, with her tripping foot; and in a minute she came back laughing and breathless.
"You put my heart in my mouth, Mistress Graeme," she said. "And all for nothing. My mother's just ordering the cream to be whipped. Well, little one, what now?"