inary handsome.

"Now, Mr. David, sit ye down here and let us have a two-handed crack,"
said she. "For I have much to tell you, and it appears besides that I
have been grossly unjust to your good taste."

"In what manner, Mistress Grant?" I asked. "I trust I have never seemed
to fail in due respect."

"I will be your surety, Mr. David," said she. "Your respect, whether to
yourself or your poor neighbours, has been always and most fortunately
beyond imitation. But that is by the question. You got a note from me?"
she asked.

"I was so bold as to suppose so upon inference," said I, "and it was
kindly thought upon."

"It must have prodigiously surprised you," said she. "But let us begin
with the beginning. You have not perhaps forgot a day when you were so
kind as to escort three very tedious misses to Hope Park? I have the
less cause to forget it myself, because you was so particular obliging
as to introduce me to some of the principles of the Latin grammar, a
thing which wrote itself profoundly on my gratitude."

"I fear I was sadly pedantical," said I, overcome with confusion at the
memory. "You are only to consider I am quite unused with the society of
ladies."

"I will say the less about the grammar then," she replied. "But how came
you to desert your charge? 'He has thrown her out, overboard, his ain
dear Annie!'" she hummed; "and his ain dear Annie and her two sisters
had to taigle home by theirselves like a string of green geese! It seems
you returned to my papa's, where you showed yourself excessively
martial, and then on to realms unknown, with an eye (it appears) to the
Bass Rock; solan geese being perhaps more to your mind than bonny
lasses."

Through all this raillery there was something indulgent in the lady's
eye which made me suppose there might be better coming.

"You take a pleasure to torment me," said I, "and I make a very feckless
plaything; but let me ask you to be more merciful. At this time there is
but the one thing that I care to hear of, and that will be news of
Catriona."

"Do you call her by that name to her face, Mr. Balfour?" she asked.

"In troth, and I am not very sure," I stammered.

"I would not do so in any case to strangers," said Miss Grant. "And why
are you so much immersed in the affairs of this young lady?"

"I heard she was in prison," said I.

"Well, and now you hear that she is out of it," she replied, "and what
more would you have? She has no need of any furthe