e.

Yet there was nothing strange in her easy manner and affable intimacy.
It was absolutely natural. She had never realized the conditions of
riches and poverty, as entailing a difference in courtesy or good
comradeship; for in the village of Culraine, there was no question of
an equality founded on money. A man or woman was rated by moral, and
perhaps a little by physical qualities--piety, honesty, courage,
industry, and strength, and knowledge of the sea and of the
fisherman's craft. Christine would have treated the great Duke of
Fife, or Her Majesty, Victoria, with exactly the same pleasant
familiarity.

She showed Ballister her mother's flower garden, that was something
beyond the usual, and she was delighted at Ballister's honest
admiration and praise of the lovely, rose-sweet plot. Both seemed to
have forgotten Neil's presence, and Neil was silent, blundering
about in his mind, looking for some subject which would give him
predominance.

Happily strolling in and out the narrow walks, and eating ripe
gooseberries from the bushes, they came to a little half-circle of
laburnum trees, drooping with the profusion of their golden blossoms.
There was a wooden bench under them, and as Christine sat down a few
petals fell into her lap.

"See!" she cried, "the trees are glad o' our company," and she laid
the petals in her palm, and added--"now we hae shaken hands."

"What nonsense you are talking, Christine," said Neil.

"Weel then, Professor, gie us a bit o' gude sense. Folks must talk in
some fashion."

And Neil could think of nothing but a skit against women, and in
apologetic mood and manner answered:

"I believe it is allowable, to talk foolishness, in reply to women's
foolishness."

"O Neil, that is cheap! Women hae as much gude sense as men hae, and
whiles they better them"--and then she sang, freely and clearly as a
bird, two lines of Robert Burns' opinion--

"He tried His prentice hand on man,
And then He made the lasses O!"

She still held the golden blossoms in her hand, and Ballister said:

"Give them to me. Do!"

"You are vera welcome to them, Sir. I dinna wonder you fancy them.
Laburnum trees are money-bringers, but they arena lucky for lovers. If
I hed a sweetheart, I wouldna sit under a laburnum tree wi' him, but
Feyther is sure o' his sweetheart, and he likes to come here, and
smoke his pipe. And Mither and I like the place for our bit secret
cracks. We dinna heed if the trees do h