be denied. So she has been to
see you! I told her you would help her to find her underlings. I thought
it might be an opening for that nice little girl who was so oppressed
with lace-making."

"Ah! she has gone to learn wood-cutting at the F. U. E. E.; but I hope
we have comfortably provided Tibbie with a damsel. She made us a long
visit, and told us all about Master Colin's nursery days. Only I am
afraid we did not understand half."

"Good old body," said the Colonel, in tones almost as national as
Tibbie's own. "She was nursery girl when I was the spoilt child of the
house, and hers was the most homelike face that met me. I wish she may
be happy here. And you are well, Ermine?"

"Very well, those drives are so pleasant, and Lady Temple so kind! It is
wonderful to think how many unlooked-for delights have come to us; how
good every one is;" and her eyes shone with happy tears as she looked
up at him, and felt that he was as much her own as ever. "And you have
brought your brother," she said; "you have been too useful to him to be
spared. Is he come to look after you or to be looked after!"

"A little of both I fancy," said the Colonel, "but I suspect he is
giving me up as a bad job. Ermine, there are ominous revivifications
going on at home, and he has got himself rigged out in London, and had
his hair cut, so that he looks ten years younger."

"Do you think he has any special views!"

"He took such pains to show me the charms of the Benorchie property that
I should have thought it would have been Jessie Douglas, the heiress
thereof, only coming here does not seem the way to set about it, unless
be regards this place as a bath of youth and fashion. I fancy he has
learnt enough about my health to make him think me a precarious kind of
heir, and that his views are general. I hope he may not be made a fool
of, otherwise it is the best thing that could happen to us."

"It has been a dreary uncomfortable visit, I much fear," said Ermine.

"Less so than you think. I am glad to have been able to be of use to
him, and to have lived on something like brotherly terms. We know and
like each other much better than we had a chance of doing before, and we
made some pleasant visits together, but at home there are many things
on which we can never be of one mind, and I never was well enough at
Gowanbrae to think of living there permanently."

"I was sure you had been very unwell! You are better though?"

"Well, since I cam