I did not wait to be twice bidden, and did justice to Miss Grant's citation on the way to Dean.
Old Lady Allardyce walked there alone in the garden, in her hat and mutch, and having a silver-mounted staff of some black wood to lean upon. As I alighted from my horse, and drew near to her with congees, I could see the blood come in her face, and her head fling into the air like what I had conceived of empresses.
"What brings you to my poor door?" she cried, speaking high through her nose. "I cannot bar it. The males of my house are dead and buried; I have neither son nor husband to stand in the gate for me; any beggar can pluck me by the baird[1]—and a baird there is, and that's the worst of it yet!" she added partly to herself.
I was extremely put out at this reception, and the last remark, which seemed like a daft wife's, left me near hand speechless.
"I see I have fallen under your displeasure, ma'am," said I. "Yet I will still be so bold as ask after Mistress Drummond."
She considered me with a burning eye, her lips pressed close together into twenty creases, her hand shaking on her staff. "This cows all!" she cried. "Ye come to me to speir for her? Would God I knew!"
"She is not here?" I cried.
She threw up her chin and made a step and a cry at me, so that I fell back incontinent.
"Out upon your leeing throat!" she cried.
- ↑ Beard.
