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Lack, nay, not lack, but utter freedom from the first instincts of cultivation, was to be heard even in the great heavy footfalls and the rasping sharp voices which fell on my ears. So different had I been listening in a room at Caddagat to my grannie's brisk pleasant voice, or to my aunt Helen's low refined accents; and I am such a one to see and feel these differences.
"A likly thing!" she cried; "an' me wi' my back a' the ro'd to the win'! Gang back yersel', Cosmo, an' sit by Grannie's fire, an' I'll gang on to the castle, an' lat them ken whaur ye are. Gien ye dinna that, I tell ye ance for a', I'm no gaein' to lea' ye till I see ye safe inside yer ain wa's."
Yes, such a picture of 'The Spinster' would be distinctly interesting. And he would put in the Kesubah, the marriage certificate that hung over the mantelpiece, in ironical reminder of her days of bloom. He unlatched the door he had never been used to knock at grannie's door, and the childish instinct came back to him. 'Guten Abend, he said.
He thought that was why Auntie Louie's nose was red and shiny and Auntie Edie's eyelids had pink edges instead of lashes. In Grannie's house they never let you do anything. They never did anything themselves. They never wanted to do anything; not even to talk. He thought it was because they knew that Grandpapa was still there all the time. But outside it the Aunties were not so very old.
"Yes, I think I would agree to that," she said, after thinking it all over. All things considered, Grannie's scheme was an excellent one and worthy of her. By a curious anomaly of Sark law, though a man may not mortgage his property without the consent of his next-in-succession, he can sell it outright and do what he chooses with the proceeds.
Besides, did not Grannie introduce surprising variations of narrative every time she told it, so that it never seemed quite the same story? "Janet's Cove" was a story of the birds, and Grannie's knowledge of the life and habits of birds seemed wonderful to them.
I got up at once, dressed myself, and stole down the one stair, across the kitchen, and up the other. I gently opened grannie's door and peeped in. A fire was burning in the room. I entered and approached the bed. I wondered how I had the courage; but children more than grown people are moved by unlikely impulses. Grannie lay breathing heavily. I stood for a moment.
Grannie's first action every evening, the moment the boys entered the room, was to glance up at the clock, that she might see whether they had arrived in reasonable time. This was not pleasant, because it admonished Robert how impossible it was for him to have a lesson on his own violin so long as the visit to Bodyfauld lasted.
Therefore I kept hold of her hand and led her by it to the other end of the cottage, for there was a friendly gloom, the only light in the place coming from the glow not flame of a fire of peat and bark. She came readily, whispering before I had time to open my mouth I'm sorry grannie's so hard to make it up." "I deserve it," I said. "Elsie, I'm a brute. I could knock my head on the wall.
Loud were most in praise of the boy's behaviour, and many were the eyes that from window and door watched the laird, as he hurried down the street to "Grannie's," where all had learned the young laird was lying.
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