I set off for the east room, and she follows, affecting humility, but with triumph in her eye. How often those little scenes took place! I was never told of the new purchase, I was lured into its presence, and then she waited timidly for my start of surprise.
'Do you see it?' she says anxiously, and I see it, and hear it, for this time it is a bran-new wicker chair, of the kind that whisper to themselves for the first six months.
'A going-about body was selling them in a cart,' my mother begins, and what followed presents itself to my eyes before she can utter another word. Ten minutes at the least did she stand at the door argy-bargying with that man. But it would be cruelty to scold a woman so uplifted.
'Fifteen shillings he wanted,' she cries, 'but what do you think I beat him down to?'
'Seven and sixpence?'
She claps her hands with delight. 'Four shillings, as I'm a living woman!' she crows: never was a woman fonder of a bargain.
I gaze at the purchase with the amazement expected of me, and the chair itself crinkles and shudders to hear what it went for (or is it merely chuckling at her?). 'And the man said it cost himself five shillings,' my mother continues exultantly. You would have thought her the hardest person had not a knock on the wall summoned us about this time to my sister's side. Though in bed she has been listening, and this is what she has to say, in a voice that makes my mother very indignant, 'You drive a bargain! I'm thinking ten shillings was nearer what you paid.'
'Four shillings to a penny!' says my mother.
'I daresay,' says my sister; 'but after you paid him the money I heard you in the little bedroom press. What were you doing there?'
My mother winces. 'I may have given him a present of an old topcoat,' she falters. 'He looked ill-happit. But that was after I made the bargain.'
'Were there bairns in the cart?'
'There might have been a bit lassie in the cart.'
'I thought as much. What did you give her? I heard you in the pantry.'
'Four shillings was what I got that chair for,' replies my mother firmly. If I don't interfere there will be a coldness between them for at least a minute. 'There is blood on your finger,' I say to my mother.
'So there is,' she says, concealing her hand.
'Blood!' exclaims my sister anxiously, and then with a cry of triumph, 'I warrant it's jelly. You gave that lassie one of the jelly cans!'
The Glasgow waiter brings up tea, and presently my sister is able to rise, and after a sharp fight I am expelled from the kitchen. The last thing I do as maid of all work is to lug upstairs the clothes-basket which has just arrived with the mangling. Now there is delicious linen for my mother to finger; there was always rapture on her face when the clothes-basket came in; it never failed to make her once more the active genius of the house. I may leave her now with her sheets and collars and napkins and fronts. Indeed, she probably orders me to go. A son is all very well, but suppose he were to tread on that counterpane!
My sister is but and I am ben - I mean she is in the east end and I am in the west - tuts, tuts! let us get at the English of this by striving: she is in the kitchen and I am at my desk in the parlour. I hope I may not be disturbed, for to-night I must make my hero say 'Darling,' and it needs both privacy and concentration. In a word, let me admit (though I should like to beat about the bush) that I have sat down to a love-chapter. Too long has it been avoided, Albert has called Marion 'dear' only as yet (between you and me these are not their real names), but though the public will probably read the word without blinking, it went off in my hands with a bang. They tell me - the Sassenach tell me - that in time I shall be able without a blush to make Albert say 'darling,' and even gather her up in his arms, but I begin to doubt it; the moment sees me as shy as ever; I still find it advisable to lock the door, and then - no witness save the dog - I 'do' it dourly with my teeth clenched, while the dog retreats into the far corner and moans. The bolder Englishman (I am told) will write a love-chapter and then go out, quite coolly, to dinner, but such goings on are contrary to the Scotch nature; even the great novelists dared not. Conceive Mr.