Volume Ii Part 2 (1/2)
She dropped into a chair near her companion, panting, and fanned herself vehemently, complaining of the heat. It seemed to make her hotter still to sit beside Mrs Naylor, in her present frame of mind.
”Try to sit still, dear Mrs Wilkie. You will find it the best way to get cool,” Mrs Naylor said, very sweetly. ”He will be sure to be home very soon. My brother-in-law is with them, you know; and between two gentlemen, they will be sure to contrive some means of getting away.”
Mrs Wilkie snorted, and fanned herself more vehemently than before, relapsing into her late mutterings about Robinson Crusoe and the desert island; but, disturbed as she was, she had presence of mind enough to suppress the parrot, and complained of the heat and her palpitations instead.
Mrs Naylor grew positively nervous, and even began to feel an antic.i.p.atory pity for her daughter, in the prospect of so tumultuous a mother-in-law--when, quite unexpectedly, the truants drove up to the door.
”Peter, you rascal!” his mother exclaimed, jumping up and running down-stairs to meet him. ”You've nearly been the death of me;” and, to demonstrate how much she had suffered, so soon as she came within range of his supporting arms, she pressed both hands upon her ”palpitation,” crying, ”Oh!” and made as if she would fall.
Peter caught her as intended, and supported her up to her room, not soothing her, by any means, but scolding her roundly, in good set terms; but then he had known her for many years, and understood her idiosyncrasies. Doubtless his system was the right one. Soothing would only have encouraged her to rave and do the scolding herself, till her palpitations came on in earnest. He was an excellent son, whatever his shortcomings in other respects might be; and there are const.i.tutions which require what their medical advisers might call ”bracing treatment,” just as others agree with bland and soothing remedies.
”Well, Peter?” she asked, with impatient eagerness, so soon as they were closeted together, in complete forgetfulness of the scene which she had been enacting the minute before--forgetting her incipient faintness, and likewise the rough restoratives which had been applied.
”Have ye done it?”
”Done what, mother?”
”You know very well what I mean. Have ye promised to marry that girl down-stairs?”
”I have not.”
She heaved a great sigh of relief; but she went on with her catechism.
”How's that? I never saw ye more taken up with anybody. Ye stuck to her like a burr the livelong day; and many were the envious glances I saw some others casting after you two, as ye went dandering over the hills like a pair of lovers. I was sure ye were nabbet--just grippet and done for like a wired rabbit; and, says I to myself, there's wan of the simple wans that love simplicity, and she's just inveigled him into makin' her an offer.”
”She doesn't want to inveigle me. She is provided already. She did not give me the chance to make a fool of myself, like your young friend in the Proverbs, whom you are so fond of talking about. She availed herself of my escort to bring her to a man she liked better than me; that was all.”
”The besom! She took her use out of ye, and let ye slide? Do ye mean to tell me that, Peter Wilkie? And are ye going to stand it? Have ye nothing more to say than just stand like a gowk and own til it? Have ye no spurrit left?”
”Whisht, mother! and don't haver.”
”Whisht yourself! Do ye think I'm going to sit still and see a monkey like that scancing at my son? She'd have the a.s.surance, would she, to take her use out of my boy, and throw him away when she was done, like a socket gooseberry! My certie, but she'll rue it yet!”
”She did nothing, mother. The girl is engaged, though we did not know it. You would not have me cut in and break up an engagement?”
”Ye might, if ye liked. Your poseetion would justifee you, and the girl would be the gainer.”
”But I wouldn't, mother, if she was fond of some one else.”
”And who's the young man?”
”You don't know him. He is a Mr Blount, who was staying here last week, but he went away.”
”I never saw him, and ye know I have been a great deal with the girl's mother. I'm thinking the attachment has not gone far, or I would have seen him hanging about Mrs Naylor.”
”I do not think Mrs Naylor likes him, and that was why he came to the island to meet her quietly.”
”Illeecitly? It'll be an illeecit amoor!”