She had, Jean said, 'come out at the Disruption.' Jean was so impressive over it that I didn't like to ask what it meant.

Do you suppose she made her debut then?
"Perhaps 'the Disruption' is a sort of religious _tamasha_.

Anyway, she was frightfully religious--a strict Calvinist--and taught Jean to regard everything from the point of view of her own death-bed.

I mean to say, the child had to ask herself, 'How will this action look when I am on my death-bed ?' Every cross word, every small disobedience, she was told, would be a 'thorn in her dying pillow.' I said, perhaps rather rudely, that Great-aunt Alison must have been a horrible old ghoul, but Jean defended her hotly.

She seems to have had a great admiration for her aged relative, though she owned that her death was something of a relief.