As soon as the carriage had left the door, the Leddy resumed the conversation with her granddaughter.

‘Noo, Beenie Walkinshaw,’ said she, ‘I maun put you to the straights o’ a question. Ye’ll no tell me, lassie, that ye hae na flung stoor in your father’s een, after the converse that we had thegither by oursels the other day; therefore and accordingly, I requeesht to know, what’s at the bottom o’ this black art and glamour that ye hae been guilty o’?—whatna scamp or hempy is’t that the cutty has been gallanting wi’, that she’s trying to cast the glaiks in a’ our een for?—Wha is’t?—I insist to know—for ye’ll ne’er gar me believe that there’s no a because for your jookery pawkrie.’

‘You said,’ replied Miss, half blushing, half laughing, ‘that you would lend a helping hand to me with Walkinshaw Milrookit.’

‘Eh! Megsty me! I’m sparrow-blasted!’ exclaimed the Leddy, throwing herself back in the chair, and lifting both her hands and eyes in wonderment.—‘But thou, Beenie Walkinshaw, is a soople fairy; and so a’ the time that thy father,—as blin’ as the silly blin’ bodie that his wife gart believe her gallant’s horse was a milch cow sent frae her minny,—was wising and wyling to bring about a matrimony, or, as I should ca’t, a matter-o’-money conjugality wi’ your cousin Jamie, hae ye been linking by the dyke-sides, out o’ sight, wi’ Walky Milrookit? Weel, that beats print! Whatna novelle gied you that lesson, lassie? Hech sirs! auld as I am, but I would like to read it. Howsever, Beenie, as the ae oe’s as sib to me as the ither, I’ll be as gude as my word; and when Dirdumwhamle and your aunty, wi’ your joe, are here the day, we’ll just lay our heads thegither for a purpose o’ marriage, and let your father play the Scotch measure or shantruse, wi’ the bellows and the shank o’ the besom, to some warlock wallop o’ his auld papistical and paternostering ancestors, that hae been—Gude preserve us!—for aught I ken to the contrary, suppin’ brimstone broth wi’ the deil lang afore the time o’ Adam and Eve. Methuselah himself, I verily believe, could be naething less than half a cousin to the nine hundred and ninety-ninth Walkinshaw o’ Kittlestonheugh. Howsever, Beenie, thou’s a—thou’s a—I’ll no say what—ye little dooble cutty, to keep me in the dark, when I could hae gi’en you and Walky sae muckle convenience for courting. But, for a’ that, I’ll no be devoid o’ grace, but act the part of a kind and affectionate grandmother, as it is well known I hae ay been to a’ my bairns’ childer; only I never thought to hae had a finger in the pye o’ a Clarissy Harlot wedding.’

‘But,’ said Robina, ‘what if my father should succeed in persuading James still to fall in with his wishes? My situation will be dreadful.’

‘’Deed, an that come to a possibility, I ken na what’s to be done,’ replied the Leddy; ‘for ye know it will behove me to tak my ain son, your father’s part; and as I was saying, Jamie Walkinshaw being as dear to me as Walky Milrookit, I can do no less than help you to him, which need be a matter of no diffeequalty, ’cause ye hae gart your father trow that ye’re out o’ the body for Jamie; so, as I said before, ye maun just conform.’

Miss looked aghast for a moment, and exclaimed, clasping her hands, at finding the total contempt with which her grandmother seemed to consider her affections,—

‘Heaven protect me! I am ruined and undone!’

‘Na, if that’s the gait o’t, Beenie, I hae nothing to say, but to help to tak up the loupen-steek in your stocking wi’ as much brevity as is consistent wi’ perspicuity, as the minister o’ Port Glasgow says.’

‘What do you mean? to what do you allude?’ cried the young lady terrified.

‘Beenie Walkinshaw, I’ll be calm; I’ll no lose my composity. But it’s no to seek what I could say, ye Jerusalem concubine, to bring sic a crying sin into my family. O woman, woman! but ye’re a silly nymph, and the black stool o’ repentance is oure gude for you!’

Robina was so shocked and thunderstruck at the old lady’s imputations and kindling animadversions, that she actually gasped with horror.

‘But,’ continued her grandmother,—‘since it canna be helped noo, I maun just tell your father, as well as I can, and get the minister when we’re thegither in the afternoon, and declare an irregular marriage, which is a calamity that never happened on my side of the house.’

Unable any longer to control her agitation, Robina started from her seat, exclaiming, ‘Hear me, in mercy! spare such horrible—’

‘Spare!’ interrupted the Leddy, with the sharpest tone of her indignation,—‘An’ ye were my dochter as ye’re but my grand-dochter, I would spare you, ye Israelitish handmaid, and randy o’ Babylon. But pride ne’er leaves its master without a fa’—your father’s weel serv’t—he would tak nane o’ my advice in your education; but instead o’ sending you to a Christian school, got down frae Manchester, in England, a governess for miss, my leddy, wi’ gum-flowers on her head, and paint on her cheeks, and speaking in sic high English, that the Babel babble o’ Mull and Moydart was a perfection o’ sense when compar’t wi’t.’

‘Good heavens! how have you fallen into this strange mistake?’ said Robina, so much recovered, that she could scarcely refrain from laughing.

‘Beenie, Beenie! ye may ca’t a mistake; but I say it’s a shame and a sin. O sic a blot to come on the ’scutcheon of my old age; and wha will tell your poor weakly mother, that, since the hour o’ your luckless clecking, has ne’er had a day to do weel. Lang, lang has she been sitting on the brink o’ the grave, and this sore stroke will surely coup her in.’

‘How was it possible,’ at last exclaimed Robina, in full self-possession, ‘that you could put such an indelicate construction on anything that I have said?’

The Leddy had by this time melted into a flood of tears, and was searching for her handkerchief to wipe her eyes; but, surprised at the firmness with which she was addressed, she looked up as she leant forward, with one hand still in her pocket, and the other grasping the arm of the elbow chair in which she was seated.

‘Yes,’ continued Robina, ‘you have committed a great error; and though I am mortified to think you could for a moment entertain so unworthy an opinion of me, I can hardly keep from laughing at the mistake.’

But although the Leddy was undoubtedly highly pleased to learn that she had distressed herself without reason, still, for the sake of her own dignity, which she thought somehow compromised by what she had said, she seemed as if she could have wished there had been a little truth in the imputation; for she said,—

‘I’m blithe to hear you say sae, Beenie; but it was a very natural delusion on my part, for ye ken in thir novelle and play-actoring times nobody can tell what might happen. Howsever, I’m glad it’s no waur; but ye maun alloo that it was a very suspectionable situation for you to be discovered colleaguing wi’ Walky Milrookit in sic a clandestine manner; and, therefore, I see that na better can be made o’t, but to bring a purpose o’ marriage to pass between you, as I was saying, without fashing your father about it till it’s by hand; when, after he has got his ramping and stamping over, he’ll come to himsel, and mak us a’ jocose.’

The conversation was continued with the same sort of consistency as far as the old lady was concerned, till Mrs. Milrookit and Dirdumwhamle, with their son, arrived.

Young Milrookit, as we have already intimated, was, in point of personal figure, not much inferior to James; and though he certainly was attached to his cousin, Robina, with unfeigned affection, he had still so much of the leaven of his father in him, that her prospective chance of succeeding to the estate of Kittlestonheugh had undoubtedly some influence in heightening the glow of his passion.

A marriage with her was as early and as ardently the chief object of his father’s ambition, as the union with his cousin Walkinshaw had been with her’s; and the hope of seeing it consummated made the old gentleman, instead of settling him in any town business, resolve to make him a farmer, that he might one day be qualified to undertake the management of the Kittlestonheugh estate. It is, therefore, unnecessary to mention, that, when Robina and her lover had retired, on being told by their grandmother they might ‘divert themselves in another room’, Dirdumwhamle engaged, with the most sympathetic alacrity, in the scheme, as he called it, to make the two affectionate young things happy. But what passed will be better told in a new chapter.