"I have heard all about it. I want no repetition of a very scandalous story. Against my will I am burdened with an intolerable obligation, to look after an idiot nephew and a niece that is a self-willed and perverse Miss."
"Jamie is no idiot," answered Judith, firmly.
"Jamie is what those pronounce him to be, who by their age, their profession, and their inquiries are calculated to judge better than an ignorant girl, not out of her teens."
"Auntie I believe you have been misinformed. Listen to me, and I will tell you what happened. As for those men——"
"Those men were doctors. Perhaps they were misinformed when they went through the College of Surgeons, were misinformed by all the medical books they have read, were misdirected by all the study of the mental and bodily maladies of men they have made, in their professional course."
"I wish, dear Aunt Dionysia, you would take Jamie to be with you a few weeks, talk to him, play with him, go walks with him, and you will never say that he is an idiot. He needs careful management, and also a little application——"
"Enough of that theme," interrupted Miss Trevisa, "I have not come here to be drawn into an argument, or to listen to your ideas of the condition of that unhappy, troublesome, that provoking boy. I wish to heaven I had not the responsibility for him, that has been thrust on me, but as I have to exercise it, and there is no one to relieve me of it, I must do my best, though it is a great expense to me. Seventy pounds is not seventy shillings, nor is it seventy pence."
"Aunt, he is not to go back to the asylum. He must not go."
"Hoity toity! must not indeed. You, a minx of eighteen to dictate to me! Must not, indeed! You seem to think that you, and not I, are Jamie's guardian."
"Papa entrusted him to me with his last words."
"I know nothing about last words. In his will I am constituted his guardian and yours, and as such I shall act as my convenience—conscience I mean, dictates."
"But, Aunt! Jamie is not to go back to Wadebridge. Aunt! I entreat you! I know what that place is. I have
