my Aunt Jen, pursing up her mouth as if
she had bitten into a crab apple, "the lassie is little likely to be
feared of you or any mortal on the earth!"

"Maybe aye--maybe no," snapped my grandmother, "at any rate be off with
you into the back kitchen and see that the dishes are washed, so as not
to be a show to the public. You and Meg have so little sense that whiles
I wonder that I am your mother."

"You are not Meg's mother that I ken of!" her daughter responded
acridly.

"I am her mistress, and the greater fool to keep such a handless hempie
about the house! You, Janet, I have to provide for in some wise--such
being the will of the Lord--His and your father's there. Now then,
clear! Be douce! Let me get on my cloak and leghorn bonnet."

My grandmother being thus accoutred, and I invested with a black jacket,
knee-breeches, shoes, and the regulation fluffy tie that tickled my
throat and made me a week-day laughing stock to all who dared, Mistress
Mary Lyon and I started to make our first call at the Great House of
Marnhoul.

CHAPTER V

THE CENSOR OF MORALS

As my grandmother and I went down the little loaning from Heathknowes
Farm she had an eye for everything. She "shooed" into duty's path a
youngling hen with vague maternal aspirations which was wandering off to
found a family by laying an egg in the underbrush about the saw-mill.
She called back final directions to her daughter Jen and maidservant
Meg, and saw that they were attended to before she would go on. She
looked into the saw-mill itself in the by-going, and made sure that Rob
McTurk was in due attendance on the whirling machinery which was turning
off the spools, as it seemed to me, with the rapidity of light. She
inquired as to the whereabouts of her husband.

"Oh, he was in a minute since!" said the politic Rob, who knew very well
that my grandfather had climbed into the bark storage loft, and was at
that moment sitting on a bundle, with a book in his hand and content in
his heart at having escaped the last injunctions of his wife.

"Well, then," said Mistress Mary Lyon, "tell him from me----" And, as
usual, a long list of recommendations followed.

"I'll see to it that he hears," said Rob McTurk imperturbably, knowing
full well that his master could by no means help hearing, since my
grandmother, in order to drown the noise of the whirling spindles and
clattering cogs, had raised her voice till her every word must have
penetrated t