o of little bare
feet in the water, and thus began his acquaintance with the Fleming
children. There were several of them, but Clifton saw first a beautiful
brown boyish face, and a pair of laughing eyes half hidden by a mass of
tangled curls, and recognised Davie. Close beside the face was another
so like it, and yet so different, that Clifton looked in wonder. The
features were alike, and the eyes were the same bonny blue, and the wind
was making free with the same dark curls about it. But it was a more
delicate face, not so rosy and brown, though the sun had touched it too.
There was an expression of sweet gravity about the mouth, and the eyes
that were looking up through the leaves into the sky had no laughter in
them. It was a fair and gentle face, but there was something in it that
made Clifton think of stern old Mr Fleming sitting on the Sabbath-day
among his neighbours in the church.

"That must be sister Lizzie's wee Katie," said Clifton to himself.

The slender girlish figure leaned against the rock on which the boy was
lying so that the two faces were nearly on a level, and a pretty picture
they made together. Clifton had been making facetious remarks to his
sister about the old-fashioned finery of the dressed-up village girls on
their way to church, but he saw nothing to criticise in the straight,
scant dress, of one dim colour, unrelieved by frill or collar, which
Katie Fleming wore. He did not think of her dress at all, but of the
slim, graceful figure and the bonny girlish face turned so gravely up to
the sky. He was not sure whether it was best to go forward and speak or
not. Ben stood still, looking also.

"I say, Katie," said the boy, lifting his head, "what is the
seven-and-twentieth?"

"Oh fie, Davie! to be thinking of propositions and such-like worldly
things, and this the Sabbath-day," said Katie, reprovingly.

"Just as if you werena thinking of them yourself, Katie."

"No, I'm no' thinking of them. They come into my head whiles. But I'm
no' fighting with them, or taking pleasure in them, as I do other days.
I'm just resting myself in this bonny quiet place, looking at the sky
and the bonny green grass. Eh, Davie, it's a grand thing to have the
rest and the quietness of the Sabbath-day."

The girl shook her head at the answer which Clifton did not hear, and
went on.

"It gives us time to come to ourselves, and to mind that there is
something else in the world besides just chees