“If it’s the lee you’re thinking of, mem--I’m no caring that,” and Janet snapped her fingers, “for the lee.”
Neither mistress nor maid called it a lie, which was a much more serious business. The Scottish tongue is full of those _nuances_, which in other languages we find so admirable.
“Oh, Janet!” cried Mrs Ogilvy again, between laughing and crying, “I fear I’ll have but an ill character to give you--washing out a shirt on Sunday and caring nothing for a lee!”
“If we can just get Andrew aff to his kirk in the afternoon. I’ll no have him at my lug for ever wi’ his sermons. Lord, if I hadna kent better how to fend for him than he did himsel’, would he ever have been a man o’ weight, as they say he is, in that Auld Licht meetin’ o’ his, and speaking ill o’ a’ the ither folk? Just you leave it to me. Bless us a’! sae lang as the dear laddie is comfortable, what’s a’ the rest to you and me?”
“Oh, Janet, my woman!” said the mistress, holding out her hand. It was so small and delicate that Janet was seized with a compunction after she had squeezed it in her own hard but faithful one, which felt like an iron framework in comparison. “I doubt I’ve hurt her,” she said to herself; “but I was just carried away.”
And Mrs Ogilvy was restored to her musing and her prayers, which presently were interrupted again by sounds in the room overhead--Janet’s step going in, which shook and thrilled the flooring, and the sound of voices. The mother sat and listened, and heard his voice speaking to Janet, the masculine tone instantly discernible in a woman’s house, speaking cheerfully, with after a while a laugh. His tone to her had been very different. It had been full of involuntary self-defence, a sort of defiance, as if he felt that at any moment something might be demanded of him, excuse or explanation--or else blame and reproach poured forth upon him. The mother’s heart swelled a little, and yet she smiled. Oh, it was very natural! He could even joke and laugh with the faithful servant-woman, who could call him to no account, whom he had known all his life. If there was any passing cloud in Mrs Ogilvy’s mind it passed away on the instant, and the only bitterness was that wistful one, with a smile of wonder accompanying it, “That he could think I would demand an account--me!”