"Go through my house? No indeed. Do you think I'll let a man with a whip in his hand go through my house after a poor frightened bird like Sophy? No, no, not while my name is Janet Binnie."
"I rode here; my whip is for my horse. Do you think I would use it on any woman?"
"God knows, I don't."
"I am not a brute."
"You say so yourself."
"Woman, I did not come here to bandy words with you."
"Man, I'm no caring to hear another word you have to say; take yourself off my door-stone," and Janet would have shut the door in his face, but he would not permit her.
"Tell Sophy to come and speak to me."
"Sophy is not here."
"She has no reason to be afraid of me."
"I should think not."
"Go and tell her to come to me then."
"She is not in my house. I wish she was."
"She is in your house."
"Do you dare to call me a liar? Man alive! Do it again, and every fisher-wife in Pittendurie will help me to give you your fairings."
"Tush!! Let me see my wife."
"Take yourself off my doorstep, or it will be the worse for you."
"Let me see my wife."
"Coming here and chapping on my door--on Janet Binnie's door!--with a horsewhip!"
"There is no use trying to deceive me with bad words. Let me pass."
"Off with you! you poor creature, you! Sophy Traill had a bad bargain with the like of you, you drunken, lying, savage-like, wife-beating pretence o' a husband!"
"Mother' Mother!" cried Christina, coming hastily forward; "Mother, what are you saying at all?"
"The God's truth, Christina, that and nothing else. Ask the mean, perfectly unutterable scoundrel how he got beyond his mother's apron-strings so far as this?"
Christina turned to Braelands. "Sir," she said, "what's your will?"
"My wife has left her home, and I have been told she is in Mistress Binnie's house."
"She is not. We know nothing about the poor, miserable lass, God help her!"
"I cannot believe you."
"Please yourself anent believing me, but you had better be going, sir. I see Limmer Scott and Mistress Roy and a few more fishwives looking this way."
"Let them look."
"Well, they have their own fashion of dealing with men who ill use a fisher lass. Sophy was born among them."
"You are a bad lot! altogether a bad lot!"
"Go now, and go quick, or we'll prove to you that we are a bad lot!" cried Janet. "I wouldn't myself think anything of putting you in a blanket and tossing you o'er the cliff into the water." And Janet, with arms akimbo and eyes blazing with anger, was not a comfortable sight.