was the answer uniformly given. "Wull ye never learn to
say _dust_, ye thrawn deevil?" with a cuff from the opened hand, was the
as inevitable rejoinder.

Here is Maidie's first letter, before she was six, the spelling
unaltered, and there are no "commoes."

"MY DEAR ISA--I now sit down to answer all your kind and beloved letters
which you was so good as to write to me. This is the first time I ever
wrote a letter in my Life. There are a great many Girls in the Square
and they cry just like a pig when we are under the painfull necessity of
putting it to Death. Miss Potune a Lady of my acquaintance praises me
dreadfully. I repeated something out of Dean Swift and she said I was
fit for the stage and you may think I was primmed up with majestick
Pride but upon my word I felt myselfe turn a little birsay--birsay is a
word which is a word that William composed which is as you may suppose a
little enraged. This horrid fat simpliton says that my Aunt is
beautifull which is intirely impossible for that is not her nature."

What a peppery little pen we wield! What could that have been out of the
sardonic Dean? what other child of that age would have used "beloved" as
she does? This power of affection, this faculty of _be_loving, and wild
hunger to be beloved, comes out more and more. She periled her all upon
it, and it may have been as well--we know, indeed, that it was far
better--for her that this wealth of love was so soon withdrawn to its
one only infinite Giver and Receiver. This must have been the law of her
earthly life. Love was indeed "her Lord and King"; and it was perhaps
well for her that she found so soon that her and our only Lord and King
Himself is Love. Here are bits from her Diary at Braehead:--

"The day of my existence here has been delightful and enchanting. On
Saturday I expected no less than three well-made Bucks the names of whom
is here advertised. Mr. Geo. Crakey [Craigie], and Wm. Keith and Jn.
Keith--the first is the funniest of every one of them. Mr. Crakey and I
walked to Crakyhall [Craigiehall] hand in hand in Innocence and
matitation [meditation] sweet thinking on the kind love which flows in
our tender hearted mind which is overflowing with majestic pleasure no
one was ever so polite to me in the hole state of my existence. Mr.
Craky you must-know is a great Buck and pretty good-looking."

"I am at Ravelston enjoying nature's fresh air. The birds are singing
sweetly--the calf doth frisk and