"And you were such a _goose_--I won't use a stronger word, though I could--as to pay any attention to what that idiot of an aunt of yours--Lord forgive me!--chose to say in her anger and disappointment?" "Yes, Granny." "And you let the jabber of poor Amelia Simpson--as kind a soul as ever breathed, but as profitable to listen to as the chirping of sparrows on the house-top--prey upon your mind, and bias your common sense?" "Yes, Granny." "Why, then, I'm ashamed of you, May! Downright ashamed--there now!" "Oh, thank you, Granny!" And May seized her grandmother's hands one after the other as the old woman drew them away impatiently, and kissed them in a kind of rapture. This little scene, with but slight variations, had been enacted several times since May's arrival on the previous evening at Jessamine Cottage. May had ceased to make any excuses for herself, or to endeavour to describe and account for her state of mind. She was only too thankful to have her doubts treated with supreme disdain. To be scolded and chidden, and told that she did not deserve such a true lover as Owen, was such happiness as she could not be grateful enough for! "Jealous of Owen because a parcel of mischievous magpies had nothing better to do than to dig their foolish bills into a poor widow's reputation? Why, I think you must have had softening of the brain!" Mrs. Dobbs would say. Whereupon May would kneel down, and bury her face in her grandmother's lap, and laugh and cry, and murmur in a smothered voice-- "Bless you, Granny darling!" "Not but what," Mrs. Dobbs admitted afterwards in a private confabulation with Jo Weatherhead, "not but what I do think it's pretty well enough to soften any one's brain to undergo a long course of Mrs. Dormer-Smith. I thought I knew pretty well what she was, and I told you so long ago, Jo Weatherhead, as you must well remember. But, mercy! I hadn't an idea! Her goings on, from what the child tells me, and that _fool_ of a letter she's written to me, display a wrongheadedness and an aggravating kind of imbecility that beats everything." Mr. Weatherhead, for his part, was inclined to be seriously wrathful with everybody who had contributed to make May unhappy--not excluding Mr. Owen Rivers, who, said Jo, might have had more gumption than to rush to Mrs. Bransby's the moment he returned to England, and make such a fuss about her, just as though _she_, and not May, were the object of his solicitude and affection.