Page:Stevenson - Weir of Hermiston (1896).djvu/45

 looked upon was the very image of the insignificant.

'Her and me were never cut out for one another,' he remarked at last. 'It was a daft-like marriage.' And then, with a most unusual gentleness of tone, 'Puir bitch,' said he, 'puir bitch!' Then suddenly: 'Where 's Erchie?'

Kirstie had decoyed him to her room and given him 'a jeely-piece.'

'Ye have some kind of gumption, too,' observed the judge, and considered his housekeeper grimly. 'When all's said,' he added, 'I micht have done waur—I micht have been marriet upon a skirling Jezebel like you!'

'There 's naebody thinking of you, Hermiston!' cried the offended woman. 'We think of her that's out of her sorrows. And could she have done waur? Tell me that, Hermiston—tell me that before her clay-cauld corp!'

'Weel, there's some of them gey an' ill to please,' observed his lordship.