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Updated: June 20, 2025
"I can sit nae langer, Mr Mellis," returned Miss Horn. "I hae eneuch to gang upo' as lang 's I hae my ain flure aneth my feet: the wuman has nae business there. I'll jist slip across an' gang in, as quaiet as a sowl intill a boady; but I s' warran' I s' mak a din afore I come oot again!" With a grim diagonal nod she left the room.
"Aih! but she was a patient cratur wi' a' flesh," persisted Mrs Mellis, as if she would not willingly be foiled in the attempt to extort for the dead some syllable of acknowledgment from the lips of her late companion. "'Deed she was that! a wheen ower patient wi' some. But that cam' o' haein mair hert nor brains. She had feelin's gien ye like and to spare. But I never took ower ony o' the stock.
"Tantus amor florum, et generandi gloria mellis!" cries Virgil in the fourth book of the Georgics, wherein he devotes himself to the bees, and hands down to us the charming errors of the ancients, who looked on nature with eyes still dazzled by the presence of imaginary gods.
"Weel," returned Mrs Mellis, with a curious mixture of deference and conscious sagacity in her tone, "a' 'at I tak upo' me to say is Think ye twice afore ye lippen to that Jean o' yours." "I lippen naething till her! I wad as sune lippen to the dottle o' a pipe amo' dry strae. What saw ye, Mistress Mellis?"
All in the streets and at the windows stared to see the grand lady from the House walking between a Scaurnose fisherman and his wife, and chatting away with them as if they were all fishers together. "What's the wordle comin' till!" cried Mrs Mellis, the draper's wife, as she saw them pass.
Had Mrs Mellis been more of a tactician, she would have dug a few approaches ere she opened fire upon the fortress of her companion's fair hearing: but instead of that, she at once discharged the imprudent question "Was ye at hame last nicht, mem, atween the hoors o' aucht an' nine?" a shot which instantly awoke in reply the whole battery of Miss Horn's indignation.
"Wha am I, to be speirt sic a queston! Wha but yersel' wad hae daurt it, Mistress Mellis?" "I hae nae wuss to pry intill ony secrets o' yours, or " "Secrets!" shouted Miss Horn! But her consciousness of good intent, and all but assurance of final victory, upheld Mrs Mellis. "The parlour blind 's gane up crookit sin' ever that thoomb fingert cratur, Watty Witherspail, made a new roller till 't.
I experienced this sadness precisely at the same age as that of my father when he lost Louis XIII.; but he at least had enjoyed the results of favour, whilst I, 'Gustavi paululum mellis, et ecce morior. Yet this was not all. In the casket of the Dauphin there were several papers he had asked me for. I had drawn them up in all confidence; he had preserved them in the same manner.
Mrs Mellis rose hurriedly when the plumb line figure of her neighbour appeared, ushered in by her husband, and received her with a somewhat embarrassed empressement, arising from the consciousness of goodwill disturbed by the fear of imputed meddlesomeness.
"An' what was 't she was efter, the jaud?" cried Miss Horn, without any attempt to conceal her growing interest. "She made naething o' 't, whatever it was; for doon the street cam the schuilmaister, an' chappit at the door, an gaed in an' waitit till ye came hame." "Weel!" said Miss Horn. But Mrs Mellis held her peace. "Weel!!?" repeated Miss Horn.
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