ished than she recommenced her pleasant musical chatter,
partly addressed to her nurse, but chiefly the unconscious overflow of a
simple nature, which could not conceal a single thought.

"I wonder what I shall call her--the darling! We must not wait until her
papa comes home. She can't be 'baby' for three years. I shall have to
decide on her name myself. Oh, what a pity! I, who never could
decide anything. Poor dear Angus! he does all--he had even to fix
the wedding-day!" And her musical laugh--another rare charm that she
possessed--caused Elspie to look round with mingled pity and affection.

"Come, nurse, you can help me, I know. I am puzzling my poor head for
a name to give this young lady here. It must be a very pretty one. I
wonder what Angus would like? A family name, perhaps, after one of those
old Rothesays that you and he make so much of."

"Oh, Mrs. Rothesay! And are ye no proud o' your husband's family?"

"Yes, very proud; especially as I have none of my own. He took me--an
orphan, without a single tie in the wide world--he took me into his warm
loving arms"--here herm voice faltered, and a sweet womanly tenderness
softened her eyes. "God bless my noble husband! I _am_ proud of him, and
of his people, and of all his race. So come," she added, her childish
manner reviving, "tell me of the remarkable women in the Rothesay family
for the last five hundred years--you know all about them, Elspie. Surely
we'll find one to be a namesake for my baby."

Elspie--pleased and important--began eagerly to relate long traditions
about the Lady Christina Rothesay, who was a witch, and a great friend
of "Maister Michael Scott," and how, with spells, she caused her seven
step-sons to pine away and die; also the lady Isobel, who let her lover
down from her bower-window with the long strings of her golden hair, and
how her brother found and slew him;--whence she laid a curse on all the
line who had golden hair, and such never prospered, but died unmarried
and young.

"I hope the curse has passed away now," gaily said the young mother,
"and that the latest scion will not be a golden-tressed damsel. Yet look
here"--and she touched the soft down beneath her infant's cap, which
might, by a considerable exercise of imagination, be called hair--"it is
yellow, you see, Elspie! But I'll not believe your tradition. My child
shall be both beautiful and beloved."

Smitten with a sudden pang, poor Elspie cried, "Oh, my leddy, dinna