"Och, hear him!" she cried, throwing up her fan with a jerk to the end of its tether with a curious flouting disdain, "politics are very well when it is 'Have at them, my merry men a'!' But after, when all is done and laid on the shelf like broken bairns'-plaiks, better be a Whig in the West Bow than a Jesuit in a king's palace abroad!" And, like enough (so at least it was whispered), the choice had been offered her. Then all in a moment she turned to me with a twinkle in her eye that was hardly less than impish. Indeed, I may say that she flew at me much like an angry wasp when a chance of your walking-stick stirs its nest. "It's prophesied," she said, "that some day a Kirkpatrick of Closeburn will be greater than a queen. For me it was, 'Thank you kindly! I would rather dwell in the Nun's House of the Dean than possess the treasures of Egypt!' But this lass is a Kirkpatrick too, though only through her grandmother, and I troth it may be her that's to wear the crown. At any rate, mind you, no dominie's son with his fingers deep in printer's ink, and in the confidence of our little Advocate that rideth on the white horse--only it's a powny--must venture any pretensions----" "You mistake me," said I, suddenly very dignified, "my family----" "Fiddlesticks," cried the old lady; "there's Bellman Jock wha's faither was a prince o' the bluid. But what the better is he o' that? Na, na, there's to be no trokin', nor eyesdropping, nor yet slipping of notes into itching palms, nor seeing one another to doors!--Och, aye, I ken the gait o't fine. Mony is the time I have seen it travelled. This young leddy is for your betters, sirrah, and being but the son of a village dominie, and working for your bread among Leein' Johnny's hundred black men in Parliament Close, ye may--an it please ye, and _if_ ye please, gie this door a wide gae-by. For if ye come a second time, Samuel Whan, the porter, will have his orders to steek the yett in your face!" "Madame," said I, very fine, "it shall not be done twice!" I stole a glance at Irma, who was standing with her face white and her lips trembling. "No," said she, "nor yet once. I came here at your request, Aunt Kirkpatrick. For years and years my brother and I have sorned on the family of this gentleman--you yourself grant he is that----" "No such thing!" snapped my lady Kirkpatrick, "gentleman indeed--a newsmonger's apprentice! That's your gentrice!" "We dwelt there, my brother and I," Irma went on, "none of my family troubling their heads or their purses about us, yet without a plack we were treated as brother and sister by all the family." "Be off, then, with your brother, since you are so fond of him!" cried the fiery old lady, rising with a long black cane in her hand, a terrier yelping and snapping at her heels. "I am for London next week, and I cannot be at the chairge of a daft hempie, especially one of such low, common tastes."