"Then what will Aunt Janet do? Why, Jean, I
never thought you'd leave her," she added reproachfully.
"Ye're leavin' her yersel'," said Jean grimly. "But I'm not gaun of ma
ain accoont. The mistress hersel' was tellun me she'll not be needin' me
ony mair."
"Well! but what's she going to do, then?" said Marcella, arrested in her
careful tidying of her father's old books on the shelves. "I'm going
straight away to ask her."
But her aunt simply told her that it was no concern of hers, but that
she was going to live very quietly now.
"But who'll look after you? Who'll do the work? What will you live on?"
"I am not accustomed to being cross-questioned," said Aunt Janet in a
definite way that forbade questions. But Marcella lay awake worrying
very late during her last few nights at the farm, picturing her aunt all
alone, without Jean, without her, without even the beasts, for a butcher
from Carlossie had come and slaughtered the last old tottery cow,
Hoodie.
"What is she going to do?" the girl asked herself again and again as
she tossed on her hard bed that night. She tried to imagine Aunt Janet
bringing in wood for the fire, breaking the ice of the well in winter,
cleaning and cooking as Jean did, and her imagination simply would not
stretch so far. Then she saw the nights when she would sit in the big
book-room with the ghosts walking about the draughty passages, up and
down through the green baize door, looking for their swords and dirks,
the beds and tables and chairs that had been sold while the rats
scuttered about the wainscoting.
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