"Did he ever tell you that you shouldna go in for it?" he demanded. "Answer me!"
"Oh! He would like me not to try for it, Father," she replied, compressing her small lips. "I know that as well as anything. I suppose tie thinks it would give him some small chance of it not that hes got any."
His discoloured teeth came together and he displayed them as his lips parted in a grin of wrath.
"So that's it!" he exclaimed. "I was sure o't. Ay, I was right!” He seated himself at table and, ignoring the steaming bowl which Mary silently placed before him, thrust his face close to Nessie's. "Say that again," he muttered.
"What, Father?"
"About that pup o' Grierson's."
"That he's got no chance of the Latta?" she queried timidly; then seeing that she was pleasing him, she harmonised her mood to his and sniffed indignantly. "No! I should think not. He hasn't a ghost of a chance. Even if I didn't go in for it, there's others have as good a chance as he has. But he'll never get it while I'm about."
"You're the stumblin' block to him."
"Yes, indeed, Father!"
"That's fine! That's fine!" he muttered, looking at her with dilated eyes. "God! it does me good to hear that." He paused. "Do ye know what happened to me as I was coming home to-day, like any other respectable townsman?" His nostrils quivered at the memory and his voice rose as he cried, "Yes, comin' home quietly and decently, when that blasted swine came up to me Provost Grierson our braw
new provost God! What they made a thing like him provost for beats me; he must have sneaked himself into the position it's it's a disgrace to the town. I suppose because he's the provost now, he thinks he can do anything, for he had the damned insolence to accost me in the open daylight and tell me not to put you in for the Latta."
He looked at her as though he expected her to swell visibly with indignation, and feeling that some response was expected of her she replied feebly:
"It was just jealousy, Father, that was all!"
"Did I not tax him with that?" he cried. "I should think I did. I told him you had always beaten his measly pup and that you would do it again and again and again." He repeated the words in an exultant shout. "The damned cheek of the man to try and cadge the thing for his own son by askin' me to keep you back for another year. And when I flung that in his face, he had the impudence to turn round and mealy-mouth me with talk of the dignity of his position, and about him bein' the spokesman of the Borough, saying that he had been told ye werena lit to go up that you were not strong enough that he was speakin' in your interests and not in his. But I had him." He clenched his fist in something of his old manner, as he exclaimed, 4t l had him on all points. I threw Lawrie's own words at his slcckit head. I had the whip hand o' him at every turn!" He laughed exultantly, but after a moment his face darkened and he muttered, "By God! I'll make him pay for it ay, and for the other things he said to me as well. Why I didna level him to the street I canna think! But never mind you and me will make him pay for't in other ways. Will we not, Nessie?" He gazed at her wheedlingly. "You'll knock that brat o' his into a cocked hat will ye not, Nessie? And then well look at the grand, chawed look on his face. You'll do it won't ye, woman?"
"Yes, Father," she replied obediently, "I’ll do it for ye."
"That's fine. That's real fine," he murmured, rubbing his veined hands together in suppressed elation. Then suddenly, at some secret thought, his expression grew black, and again thrusting his face into hers, he exclaimed, "You better do it. By God! You better beat him. If you don't I'll I'll grip that thin neck o' yours, and fair strangle ye. You've got to win that Latta or it'll be the waur o' ye."
“I’ll do it, Father! I'll do it!" she whimpered.
"Yes, you'll do it or I'll know why," he cried wildly. "I tell you there's a conspiracy in this town against me. Every man's hand is turned against me. They hate me for what I am. They're jealous. They know that I'm away and above them that if I had my rights I would wipe my dirty boots on the smug faces o' the lot of them. But never mind," he nodded his head to himself in a wild burst of unreason, "I'll show them yet. I'll put the fear o' me into them! The Latta will be the start o' it. That'll put a spoke in the Lord High Provost's wheel then we'll begin in real earnest."
At this point Mary, who had been standing in the background observing her father's paroxysm and his manner towards Nessie with an expression of acute anxiety, came forward and said coaxingly:
"Will you not take your broth before it gets cold, Father? I took such pains with it. Let Nessie get hers too she must eat up if she's going to study as hard as she does."
His exaltation was suddenly arrested at her words. His expression changed, as though something withdrew from it, retired quickly from open view into the hidden recesses of his mind, and he exclaimed angrily:
"What do you want to interfere for? Can you not leave us alone? When we want your advice well ask for it." He picked up his spoon and sullenly began his soup; then, after a while, as though he had been brooding on her effrontery in speaking, he exclaimed, "Keep your remarks about Nessie to yourself. I'll manage her my own way.”
The meal proceeded for some time in silence, but when they were partaking of the next simple course, Brodie again turned to his younger daughter, and staring at her sideways began, in the ingratiating tone which he invariably adopted for this rote of questions and which, from constant repetition and the manner of his address, now excited her almost to the point of hysteria.
"And how did you get on to-day, Nessie?"
"Quite well, Father!"
"Did anybody praise my own lass to-day? Come on, now, somebody said something about you. It was your French to-day, was it not?"
She answered him mechanically, at random, anyhow only to be rid of the nerve-racking necessity of formulating new and gratifying replies to his fatuous, yet pressing queries, of appeasing his insatiable demand for tangible evidence of her prowess, of the attention which his daughter was attracting at school. At length, when he had satisfied himself, although she on her part hardly knew what she had said, he lay back in his chair and, regarding her with a bland, proprietary eye, remarked:
"Good enough! Good enough for the Brodies! That was high praise for them to give us. You're doin’ not so badly, woman! But ye maun do better. Better and better. Ye've got to make as sure o' that Latta as if it was lying on that plate in front o' ye. Guid sakes! Just think on it. Thirty guineas every year for three years that makes ninety guineas or near enough to a hundred, golden sovereigns. There's a hundred, golden sovereigns lying there on that plate o' yours waiting to be picked up. Ye havena got to scramble for them, or stoop for them; you've just got to gather them up! God! If ye don't put these wee hands o' yours out to lift them, I'll twist the heid off ye!" He looked at the empty plate before her, seeing it piled high with sovereigns, gleaming with the rich lustre of heaped gold, filled with a sum which, in his reduced circumstances, seemed to him enormous. "It's a rich, rich prize," he murmured, "and it's yours! I could see it makes the greedy eyes o' that snipe Grierson drop out o' their sockets to think on it comin' into this house. I'll learn him to affront me in the main street of the town!" He was moved by a short, silent laugh that was like a sneer, then, looking again at Nessie, he lifted his eyebrows and, with a resumption of his absurdly arch manner, said in a tone of high confidence,
"I'll be home early to-night, Nessie! We'll make a bend the minute we've finished our tea. Not a minute will we waste! We'll be on with our lessons before we've swallowed the last bite." He looked at her slyly, as he remarked,
"You can be at it in the parlour, and I'll bide in here to see that not a soul disturbs ye. Quiet! Quiet! That's what ye want, and I'll see that ye have it. Ye'll have the quiet o' the grave!"