"I suppose ye've no heard," said Jean, turning a protruding skillet-handle out of her way as she reached up for the flour-shaker, "that the young lad here—Harold—is engaged to a girl o' what they call the smart set. He's a takin' lad in some ways; but he's got Sir Thomas's way o' looking at marriage. It's nae good, Harrisons thinks, unless it brings social advantage. Ey, the conquest o' society is uphill work for puir Sir Tom.... By the bye, Sir Thomas himsel' is one person that, if onything happened our leddy, would not miss her much nor mourn for her long. Ey, he blames her, like, for 'keepin' him back'—her, that made him!"
CHAPTER XIII. A Plot That Miscarried.
"Hae ye no mercy on yon phone, bairnie," observed Jean, rolling cut-cakes at a side-table, an afternoon or so later, "skirlin' itsel' sick in the corner there. If it's yon grocery-man, tell him from me he's gone daft, an' I'll be changin' oor custom if he's no more canny with thae orders, like."
Daisy came out of one of the moods of pensiveness into which she had been in the habit of falling, lately, since the junior master of the house had inaugurated his policy of "putting her where she belonged." Skipping over, she took the phone from the hook.
"Hello!" she said; "Waghorn's grocery?"
"Not this time, stranger," said a dry voice at the other end of the line; "but you've got two more guesses, if you like."
Two dimples sprang into view near the corners of Daisy's mouth, and a fine blush spread right to where the receiver rested against her ear. "I doubt it's no the grocery-man," murmured Jean, glancing over her shoulder as she laid a wafer of light, white dough in the bake-pan that stood, larded and ready, at her right.