These two maiden grand-aunts had invited their niece to pay them a
visit--an aunt of mine, who had made what they considered a very
imprudent marriage, and where considerable pecuniary privations were too
likely to accompany the step she had taken. The poor niece had to bear
many a taunt directed against her improvident union, as for
example:--One day she had asked for a piece of tape for some work she
had in hand as a young wife expecting to become a mother. Miss Nelly
said, with much point, "Ay, Kitty, ye shall get a bit knittin' (_i.e._ a
bit of tape). We hae a'thing; we're no married." It was this lady who,
by an inadvertent use of a term, showed what was passing in her mind in
a way which must have been quite transparent to the bystanders. At a
supper which she was giving, she was evidently much annoyed at the
reckless and clumsy manner in which a gentleman was operating upon a ham
which was at table, cutting out great lumps, and distributing them to
the company. The lady said, in a very querulous tone, "Oh, Mr. _Divot_,
will you help Mrs. So and So?"--divot being a provincial term for a turf
or sod cut out of the green, and the resemblance of it to the pieces
carved out by the gentleman evidently having taken possession of her
imagination. Mrs. Helen Carnegy of Craigo, already mentioned, was a
thorough specimen of this class. She lived in Montrose, and died in
1818, at the advanced age of ninety-one.
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