What's a' this
aboot Mrs Forbes and you?"
"Grit fowk maunna ride ower the tap o' puir fowk like me, Miss
Anderson."
"She's a widow, Mr Bruce"-???Annie could not add "and childless"???-"and
lays nae claim to be great fowk. It's no a Christian way o' treatin'
her."
"Fowk _maun_ hae their ain. It's mine, and I maun hae't. There's
naething agen that i' the ten tables. There's nae gospel for no giein'
fowk their ain. I'm nae a missionar noo. I dinna haud wi' sic things. I
canna beggar my faimily to haud up her muckle hoose. She maun pay me,
or I'll tak' it."
"Gin ye do, Mr Bruce, ye s' no hae my siller ae minute efter the time's
up; and I'm sorry ye hae't till than."
"That's neither here nor there. Ye wad be wantin' 't or that time ony
hoo."
Now Bruce had given up the notion of leaving Glamerton, for he had
found that the patronage of the missionars in grocery was not essential
to a certain measure of success; and he had no intention of proceeding
to an auction of Mrs Forbes's goods, for he saw that would put him in a
worse position with the public than any amount of quiet practice in
lying and stealing. But there was every likelihood of Annie's being
married some day; and then her money would be recalled, and he would be
left without the capital necessary for carrying on his business upon
the same enlarged scale???-seeing he now supplied many of the little
country shops.
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