“Aunt Jean!” cried Mrs. Huntley, making a sudden step out of her chair. “If you do, Me’mar will kill me--oh! hold your tongues, children! Do you think I can bear one of papa’s passions--a person in my poor health? Aunt Jean, if you do, I’ll never speak to you again!” Aunt Jean contemplated her niece, with her twinkling black eyes, making a _moue_ of vivid contempt as she nodded her head impatiently. “Fat for can ye no hold your peace for a fool-wife?” said Aunt Jean; “did ye think I had as little wit as you? What about Norlaw? You see the laird here and him were aye ill friends. Hout ay! mony a ane’s ill friends with Me’mar. I mind the bairns just fun you were born, Joan. Twa toddling wee anes, and ane in the cradle. Pity me! I mind it because I was losing my hearing, and turning a cankered auld wife; and it was them that took and buried their father? Honest lads! I would like to do them a good turn.” “But I know there’s something more about Norlaw,” cried Joanna, “and I’ll say you’re a cankered auld wife till you tell me--I will! and you would have told me before now but for mamma. Do you hear, Aunt Jean?” “Hout ay, I hear,” said the old woman, who could manage her deafness like most people who possess that defect--(where it is not extreme, a little deafness is in its way quite a possession) “but I maun take time to think fat it was I promised to tell you. Something that happened when I was a young lass. Just that, Joan--I was staying at my married sister’s, that was your grandmother, and Jeanie, there, your mamaw, was a bit little bairn--she was aye a sma’ thing of her years, taking physic for a constancy. There was a poor gentleman there, ane of the Gordons, as good blood in his veins as ony man in the kingdom, and better than the king’s ain, that was only a German lairdie--but ye see this lad was poor, and fat should save him but he got into debt, and fat should help him but he died. So the sheriff’s officers came and stopped the funeral; and the lads rose, a’ the friends that were at it, and all the men on the ground, and fat should ail them to crack the officers’ crowns, and lay them up in a chamber; but I’ve heard say it was a sair sicht to see the hearse rattling away at a trot, and a’ the black coaches afterhand, as if it was a bridal--oh fie!--nothing else was in everybody’s mouth on our side of the water, a’ the mair because the Gordon lad that died was of the English chapel, and behoved to have a service o’er his grave, and the English minister was faint-hearted and feared. It wasna done at nicht, but in broad daylicht, and by the strong hand--and that happened--I wouldna say but it was forty year ago; for I was a young lass and your mamaw there a little bairn.” “I daresay, mamma,” said Patricia, who had dried her tears, “that people don’t know of it yet; and at the worst it was all papa’s fault--I don’t think we should be afraid to go--it wasn’t our blame, I’m sure.”