 have been
nowhere more sensibly felt than in a family where the domestics were so little
disposed to personal activity; yet this serving maiden was so far from rejoicing
in seeing a supposed aërial substitute discharging a task which she should have
long since performed herself, that she proceeded to raise the family by her
screams of horror, uttered as thick as if the Brownie had been flaying her.
Jeanie, who had immediately resigned her temporary occupation, and followed the
yelling damsel into the courtyard, in order to undeceive and appease her, was
there met by Mrs. Janet Balchristie, the favourite sultana of the last Laird, as
scandal went - the housekeeper of the present. The good-looking buxom woman,
betwixt forty and fifty (for such we described her at the death of the last
Laird), was now a fat, red-faced, old dame of seventy, or there-abouts, fond of
her place, and jealous of her authority. Conscious that her administration did
not rest on so sure a basis as in the time of the old proprietor, this
considerate lady had introduced into the family the screamer aforesaid, who
added good features and bright eyes to the powers of her lungs. She made no
conquest of the Laird, however, who seemed to live as if there was not another
woman in the world but Jeanie Deans, and to bear no very ardent or overbearing
affection even to her. Mrs. Janet Balchristie, notwithstanding, had her own
uneasy thoughts upon the almost daily visits to St. Leonard's Crags, and often,
when the Laird looked at her wistfully and paused, according to his custom
before utterance, she expected him to say, »Jenny, I am gaun to change my
condition;« but she was relieved by, »Jenny, I am gaun to change my shoon.«
    Still, however, Mrs. Balchristie regarded Jeanie Deans with no small portion
of malevolence, the customary feeling of such persons towards anyone who they
think has the means of doing them an injury. But she had also a general aversion
to any female tolerably young, and decently well-looking, who showed a wish to
approach the house of Dumbiedikes and the proprietor thereof. And as she had
raised her mass of mortality out of bed two hours earlier than usual, to come to
the rescue of her clamorous niece, she was in such extreme bad humour against
all and sundry, that Saddletree would have pronounced that she harboured
inimicitiam contra omnes mortales.
    »Wha the deil are ye?« said the fat dame to poor Jeanie, whom she did not
immediately recognise, »
