Barring this single limitation she seems to be a treasure-house of all good practical qualities; and being thus clad and panoplied in virtue, why should she be so timid and self-distrustful?
She wears an expression which can mean only one of two things: either she has heard of the national tomahawk and is afraid of violence on our part, or else her mother was frightened before she was born.

This applies in general to her walk and voice and manner, but is it fear that prompts her eternal 'I cudna say,' or is it perchance Scotch caution and prudence?
Is she afraid of projecting her personality too indecently far?
Is it the indirect effect of heresy trials on her imagination?
Does she remember the thumbscrew of former generations?
At all events, she will neither affirm nor deny, and I am putting her to all sorts of tests, hoping to discover finally whether she is an accident, an exaggeration, or a type.
Salemina thinks that our American accent may confuse her.

Of course she means Francesca's and mine, for she has none; although we have tempered ours so much for the sake of the natives, that we can scarcely understand each other any more.

As for Susanna's own accent, she comes from the heart of Aberdeenshire, and her intonation is beyond my power to reproduce.
We naturally wish to identify all the national dishes; so, "Is this cockle soup, Susanna ?" I ask her, as she passes me the plate at dinner.
"I cudna say." "This vegetable is new to me, Susanna; is it perhaps sea-kale ?" "I canna say, mam." Then finally, in despair, as she handed me a boiled potato one day, I fixed my searching Yankee brown eyes on her blue-Presbyterian, non-committal ones, and asked, "What is this vegetable, Susanna ?" In an instant she withdrew herself, her soul, her ego, so utterly that I felt myself gazing at an inscrutable stone image, as she replied, "I cudna say, mam." This was too much! Her mother may have been frightened, very badly frightened, but this was more that I could endure without protest.

The plain boiled potato is practically universal.