ve thinks we had better not
breakfast at home until she becomes accustomed to the surroundings."

"Shall we allow her to become accustomed to them?" I questioned.

"She came up from Glasgow to Edinburgh for the day, and went to see Mrs.
M'Collop just as our telegram arrived. She was living with an 'extremely
nice family' in Glasgow, and only broke her engagement in order to try
Fifeshire air for the summer; so she will remain with us as long as she
is benefited by the climate."

"Can't you pay her for a month and send her away?"

"How can we? She is Mrs. M'Collop's sister's husband's niece, and we
intend returning to Mrs. M'Collop. She has a nice ladylike appearance,
but when she takes her bonnet off she looks seventy years old."

"She ought always to keep it off, then," returned Francesca, "for she
looked eighty with it on. We shall have to soothe her last moments, of
course, and pay her funeral expenses. Did you offer her a cup of tea and
show her the box-bed?"

"Yes; she said she was muckle obleeged to me, but the coals were so poor
and hard she couldna batter them up to start a fire the nicht, and she
would try the box-bed to see if she could sleep in it. I am glad to
remember that it was you who telegraphed for her, Penelope."

"Let there be no recriminations," I responded; "let us stand shoulder to
shoulder in this calamity,--isn't there a story called Calamity Jane? We
might live at the inn, and give her the cottage for a summer residence,
but I utterly refuse to be parted from our cat and the 1602 lintel."

After I have once described Miss Grieve I shall not suffer her to
begloom these pages as she did our young lives. She is so exactly
like her kind in America she cannot be looked upon as a national type.
Everywhere we go we see fresh, fair-haired, sonsie lasses; why should
we have been visited by this affliction, we who have no courage in a
foreign land to rid ourselves of it?

She appears at the door of the kitchen with some complaint, and stands
there talking to herself in a depressing murmur until she arrives at the
next grievance. Whenever we hear this, which is whenever we are in the
sitting-room, we amuse ourselves by chanting lines of melancholy poetry
which correspond to the sentiments she seems to be uttering. It is the
only way the infliction can be endured, for the sitting-room is so small
that we cannot keep the door closed habitually. The effect of this plan
is something like the followin