allowed them to proceed but now he turned to them coarsely.
' Twas my express wish that the funeral should be private and as quiet as might be. Did ye wish the town band out for her, and free whisky and a bonfire?'
They were frankly shocked at such brutality, drew more closely together in their resentment, began to think of leaving.
'Weelum! Do ye know ony where in Levenford we're likely to be able to get our tea before the train goes?' said Mrs. Lumsden, as an indication of departure, in a trembling but rancorous tone. She had expected, instead of this thin, sour wine and bought seed cake, a lavish display of hot and cold cooked meats, baked pastries, scones, tea bread, and other appropriate delicacies; coming from a distant village in Ayrshire they knew nothing of Brodie's failure and thought him well able to provide a more worthy and substantial repast than that of which they were now partaking.
'Will ye no' have another biscuit then, if ye're hungry?' said old Grandma Brodie, with a slight titter 'they're Deesides I can recommend them.' The wine was like nectar to her unaccustomed palate and she had partaken freely of it, so that a faint flush marked the yellow, wrinkled skin over her high cheek bones; she was enjoying the occasion immensely, making high festival of the return to earth of the poor remains of Margaret Brodie. 'Have a wee drap mair wine, will ye not?'
'Thank ye! No!' said Mrs. Lumsden, compressing her mouth superciliously into the smallest possible compass and issuing her vords disdainfully from the diminutive aperture. 'I'll not indulge, if ye don't mind. I'm not addicted, and besides I couldna fancy that vhat you're drinkin'. Do ye know,' she continued, drawing on her lack kid glove, 'that's a bold-looking quean ye have about the house it a time like this. Have ye had her long?'
As Grandma Brodie made to answer, a polite hiccough disturbed her.
'I dinna ken her,' she replied confusedly; 'she's juist come in low. 'Twas James sent her in to gie me a haund.'
Mrs. Lumsden exchanged a significant glance with her cousin by narriage. Each nodded her head with a slight downward gesture of disparagement, as though to say, 'Just what we thought,' and both turned ostentatiously compassionate eyes upon Nessie.
'What in the world will ye do without your mother, dearie?' renarked one.
'Ye maun come doun to us, child, for a spell,' said the other. Ye would like to play about the farm, would ye not?'
'I can look after Nessie,' inserted Brodie icily; 'she needs neitheir our help nor your pity. When ye do hear o' her she'll be shapin' for something that you and yours could never attain.'
As Nancy entered the room to collect the glasses, he continued:
'Here, Nancy! These two ladies have just remarked that you're brazen was it quean ye said, leddies ay, a brazen quean. In eturn for this good opinion, would ye mind showin' them out o' tie house and I suppose this bit gentleman they've brocht wi’ ‘hem better go too.'
Nancy tossed her head pertly.
'If it was my house,' she said, with a bold look at Brodie, 'they yould never have been in it.'
The two women, scandalised, stood up.
'The language and the behaviour! In front of the child too,' gasped Janet, on her way to the door, 'and at such a time as this.'
Mrs. Lumsden, equally shocked, but less intimidated, drew herself ip to her tall, angular height and threw her head back defiantly.
'I've been insulted,' she shrilled from between thin, compressed lips, 'in a house where I came a long and expensive journey to bring comfort. I'm goin', oh! indeed yes, I'm goin'; nothing would stop me, but,' she added emphatically, 'before I leave, I want to know what has been left to our side o' the family by my puir cousin.'
Brodie laughed shortly in her face.
'Indeed now! And what had she to leave, pray?'
'I happen to know from Weelum that forbye the china, pictures, and the ornaments on the best bedroom mantelpiece, and her mother's watch and locket, Margaret Lumsden took a pickle siller wi' her into the house,' she cried angrily.
'Ay, and she took a pickle out o' it,' answered Brodie harshly. 'Get away wi' ye! The sight o' your sour, graspin', avaricious face fair scunners me!' With whirling movements of his arms he herded them to the door. 'Get away with ye a'; there's nothing for ye here. I'm sorry I let ye break bread in my house.'
Mrs. Lumsden, almost in tears from rage and vexation, turned on the doorstep.
'We'll have the law on ye about it,' she cried. 'I'm not surprised that puir Margaret Lumsden withered out here. She was ower guid for ye, wi' your bold besoms. Ye've made a cryin' scandal out of the burial of the puir soul. Come awa' home, Weelum.'
'That's right,' shouted Brodie tauntingly, 'take Weelum away hame to his bed. I'm not surprised he's so fond o' it, wi' such a tricksy ornament as yersel' below the blankets.' He leered at her insultingly. 'Ye're richt not to let him out it for a nicht, for if ye did ye might never get him back.'
As she disappeared with the others, her head high, her colour flaming, he cried out after her:
'I'll not forget to send ye your flowers whenever ye require them.'
But when he returned to the parlour his hard assumption of indifference had dropped from him and, wishing to be alone, in a different, quiet voice he bade them leave him. As they filed out he turned to Matthew and said to him meaningly:
'Away out and find work. I want no more of your useless, watery tear-bag nonsense. Get something to do. Ye'll not live off me much longer;' but as Nessie passed he patted her head and said gently:
'Don't greet any more, pettie; your father will take care of ye. Dry your eyes now, and run and take up a book or something. You needna worry. I'm goin' to look after you in future.'
That, he considered, as he sat down again in the empty room, was the course towards which his life must immediately shape itself the vindication of himself through Nessie. She was his asset, clever yes, he told himself brilliant! He would nurse her, encourage her, thrust her forward to triumph after triumph until her name and his own should resound in the town. He saw in his colossal failure and in the recent misfortunes which had beset him only a temporary eclipse from which in time he must necessarily emerge. 'Ye cannot keep a good man down,' one of his frequently repeated maxims, occurred again to him comfortingly. He would be up again presently, more dominant than before, and in his own mind he considered it an almost masterly strategy to plan a return to his old, favoured position through Nessie. He heard in anticipation the name of Nessie Brodie upon every one's lips, became aware of himself sharing largely in the universal adulation. 'There's been no holdin' him since his wife died,' he heard them say; 'she must have been a muckle hindrance to the man.' How true that was! His main feeling, as he helped to lower the light coffin into its shallow trench, had been one of relief that he was at last free of a useless encumbrance, a drag upon both his patience and his purse. He remembered nothing in her favour, treasured nothing of her virtues, but dwelt only upon the weakness, the lack of physical attraction that she had manifested in her later years. No gentle sentiment, such as had faintly throbbed within him at her deathbed, no remembrance of the earlier days of their life together now stirred him; his memory was clouded like an overhung sky that refused to allow one single, relieving gleam to penetrate from the clearer air behind. He imagined that she had failed him in everything, in her companionship, in the oblation of her physical being, in the very geniture of her children. No credit was due to her for Nessie, whom he felt to be entirely of his substance, and such obituary as his consideration gave her was epitomised in the single word incompetent. As the irrevocable finality of her departure struck him with a sudden and forceful reality, a feeling of a strange emancipation came over him. The lightness of her restraint had been from its very feebleness galling to him. He was a young man yet, and virile, for whom many pleasures lay in store which might be tasted freely now that she was gone. His lower lip hung thickly forward as his thoughts dallied appreciatively upon Nancy, then roamed forward in anticipation amongst the lush, erotic pastures of his mind. Nancy must be always about him now she could remain in the house for good. There was nothing to prevent her being beside him, no possible objection to her serving him, cheering him and yes, a man must, after all, have a housekeeper!
Satisfied at this comforting decision, insensibly his meditations turned again upon his younger daughter. His mind, incapable of embracing any but one purpose at a time, pursued that purpose, when it had been adopted, with a relentless obstinacy; and now, he realised that in order to continue living in his house, to maintain Nessie and to educate her as he wished, he must quickly find some means of income. His lips tightened and he nodded his head
