And looking round the fire, as if in a state of unconscious uncertainty of which she complained, old Elspeth relapsed into her habitual and mechanical occupation of twirling the spindle.
“Eh, sirs!” said Jenny Rintherout, under her breath to her gossip, “it’s awsome to hear your gudemither break out in that gait—it’s like the dead speaking to the living.”
“Ye’re no that far wrang, lass; she minds naething o’ what passes the day—but set her on auld tales, and she can speak like a prent buke. She kens mair about the Glenallan family than maist folk—the gudeman’s father was their fisher mony a day. Ye maun ken the papists make a great point o’ eating fish—it’s nae bad part o’ their religion that, whatever the rest is—I could aye sell the best o’ fish at the best o’ prices for the Countess’s ain table, grace be wi’ her! especially on a Friday—But see as our gudemither’s hands and lips are ganging—now it’s working in her head like barm—she’ll speak eneugh the night. Whiles she’ll no speak a word in a week, unless it be to the bits o’ bairns.”
“Hegh, Mrs. Mucklebackit, she’s an awsome wife!” said Jenny in reply. “D’ye think she’s a’thegither right? Folk say she downa gang to the kirk, or speak to the minister, and that she was ance a papist but since her gudeman’s been dead, naebody kens what she is. D’ye think yoursell that she’s no uncanny?”
“Canny, ye silly tawpie! think ye ae auld wife’s less canny than anither? unless it be Alison Breck—I really couldna in conscience swear for her; I have kent the boxes she set fill’d wi’ partans, when”—
“Whisht, whisht, Maggie,” whispered Jenny—“your gudemither’s gaun to speak again.”
“Wasna there some ane o’ ye said,” asked the old sibyl, “or did I dream, or was it revealed to me, that Joscelind, Lady Glenallan, is dead, an’ buried this night?”
“Yes, gudemither,” screamed the daughter-in-law, “it’s e’en sae.”
“And e’en sae let it be,” said old Elspeth; “she’s made mony a sair heart in her day—ay, e’en her ain son’s—is he living yet?”
“Ay, he’s living yet; but how lang he’ll live—however, dinna ye mind his coming and asking after you in the spring, and leaving siller?”