“Aweel, my bairn, and that will never make me risk the honest name I have kept for sixty years. It was never your mother’s custom, and it shall never be mine, to take up with ranters, and jugglers, and singing women; and I am not so far to seek for a dwelling, that the same roof should cover me and a tramping princess like that.”
With this the refractory gouvernante began in great hurry to adjust her tartan mantle for going abroad, by pulling it so forwards as to conceal the white linen cap, the edges of which bordered her shrivelled but still fresh and healthful countenance. This done, she seized upon a staff, the trusty companion of her journeys, and was fairly trudging towards the door, when the smith stepped between her and the passage.
“Wait at least, old woman, till we have cleared scores. I owe you for fee and bountith.”
“An’ that’s e’en a dream of your own fool’s head. What fee or bountith am I to take from the son of your mother, that fed, clad, and bielded me as if I had been a sister?”
“And well you repay it, nurse, leaving her only child at his utmost need.”
This seemed to strike the obstinate old woman with compunction. She stopped and looked at her master and the minstrel alternately; then shook her head, and seemed about to resume her motion towards the door.
“I only receive this poor wanderer under my roof,” urged the smith, “to save her from the prison and the scourge.”
“And why should you save her?” said the inexorable Dame Shoolbred. “I dare say she has deserved them both as well as ever thief deserved a hempen collar.”
“For aught I know she may or she may not. But she cannot deserve to be scourged to death, or imprisoned till she is starved to death; and that is the lot of them that the Black Douglas bears mal-talent against.”
“And you are going to thraw the Black Douglas for the cake of a glee woman? This will be the worst of your feuds yet. Oh, Henry Gow, there is as much iron in your head as in your anvil!”