ers?" they
said. "It's no great schoolin' she had herself, and if her girls do as
well as she's done, they'll be lucky,"--a speech which made John
McDonald laugh out when it was reported to him. He could afford to laugh
now.

"I mind there was a day when they thought different o' me from that," he
said. "I'm obliged to them for nothin'; but I'd like the little one to
have a better chance than the marryin' o' a man like me, an' if
anything'll get it for her, it'll be schoolin'."

The "boardin' like a lady," which had so offended the Misses Mclntosh's
sense of propriety, was not, after all, so great an extravagance as they
had supposed; for it was in his own brother's house her thrifty father
had put her, and had stipulated that part of the price of her board was
to be paid in produce of one sort and another from the farm, at market
rates; "an' so, ye see, the lass 'll be eatin' it there 'stead of here,"
he said to his wife when he told her of the arrangement, "an' it's a
sma' difference it'll make to us i' the end o' the two years."

"An' a big difference to her a' her life," replied Isabella, warmly.

"Ay, wife," said John, "if it fa's out as ye hope; but it's main
uncertain countin' on the book-knowledge. There's some it draws up an'
some it draws down; it's a millstone. But the lass is bright; she's as
like you as two peas in a pod. If ye'd had the chance she's had--"

Rising color in Isabella's face warned John to stop. It is a strange
thing to see how often there hovers a flitting shadow of jealousy
between a mother and the daughter to whom the father unconsciously
manifests a chivalrous tenderness akin to that which in his youth he had
given only to the sweetheart he sought for wife. Unacknowledged,
perhaps, even unmanifested save in occasional swift and unreasonable
petulances, it is still there, making many a heartache, which is none
the less bitter that it is inexplicable to itself, and dares not so much
as confess its own existence.

"It's a better thing for a woman to make her way i' the world on the
book-learnin' than to be always at the wheel an' the churn an' the
floors to be whitened," replied Isabella, sharply. "An' one year like
another, till the year comes ye're buried. I look for Bel to marry a
minister, or maybe even better."

"Ye'd a chance at a minister yersel', then, my girl," replied the wise
John, "an' ye did not take it." At which memory the wife laughed, and
the two loyal hearts were me