‘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,--