His mother scolded him to a degree considerably beyond her own sense of the wrong, telling him he would get her into disgrace in the town as the mother of a lawless son, who meddled with other people's property in a way little better than stealing.
"I fancy, mamma, a loun's legs are aboot as muckle his ain property as the tyke was Rob Bruce's.

It's no the first time she's bitten half a dizzen legs that were neither her ain nor her maister's." Mrs Forbes could not well answer this argument; so she took advantage of the fact that Alec had, in the excitement of self-defence, lapsed into Scotch.
"Don't talk so vulgarly to me, Alec," she said; "keep that for your ill-behaved companions in the town." "They are no worse than I am, mamma.

_I_ was at the bottom of it." "I never said they were," she answered.
But in her heart she thought if they were not, there was little amiss with them..