He concealed his condition from his
mother for that night; but next morning his leg was so bad, that there
was no longer a possibility of hiding the fact. To tell a lie would
have been so hard for Alec, that he had scarcely any merit in not
telling one. So there was nothing for it but confession. His mother
scolded him to a degree considerably beyond her own sense of the wrong,
telling him he would get her into disgrace in the town as the mother of
a lawless son, who meddled with other people's property in a way little
better than stealing.
"I fancy, mamma, a loun's legs are aboot as muckle his ain property as
the tyke was Rob Bruce's. It's no the first time she's bitten half a
dizzen legs that were neither her ain nor her maister's."
Mrs Forbes could not well answer this argument; so she took advantage
of the fact that Alec had, in the excitement of self-defence, lapsed
into Scotch.
"Don't talk so vulgarly to me, Alec," she said; "keep that for your
ill-behaved companions in the town."
"They are no worse than I am, mamma. _I_ was at the bottom of it."
"I never said they were," she answered.
But in her heart she thought if they were not, there was little amiss
with them.
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