uld be the last to say my thoughts
ever stirred an ell-length out of the customary track of breakfast,
beds, dinner and supper. Do not think I do not love and reverence my
brothers, mind you!" she added almost fiercely, rubbing with her lustre
apron the table there was nothing to rub from save its polish. "Oh!
they are big men and far-travelled men, and they have seen the wonderful
sights. They used to get great thick letters franked from the Government
with every post, and the Duke will be calling on them now and then in
his chariot. They speak to me of nothing but the poorest, simplest,
meanest transactions of the day because they think I cannot comprehend
nor feel. Gilian, do you know I am afraid of them? Not of John
the Captain, for he is different, with a tongue that goes, but I'm
frightened when the General and the Cornal sit and look at me saying
nothing because I am a woman."

"I do not like people to sit looking at me saying nothing," said Gilian,
"because when I sit and look at people without saying anything I am
reading them far in. But mostly I would sooner be making up things in my
mind."

"Ah!" said she, "that is because your mind is young and spacious;
theirs, poor dears, are full of things that have actually happened, and
they need not fancy the orra any more."

They moved together out of the parlour and along the lobby that lighted
it. With a low sill it looked upon the street that now was thronged with
the funeral people passing home or among the shops, or from tavern to
tavern. The funeral had given the town a holiday air, and baxters and
dealers stood at their doors gossiping with their customers or by-goers.
Country carts rumbled past, the horses moving slowly, reluctant to go
back from this place of oats and stall to the furrows where the collar
pressed constantly upon the shoulder. One or two gentlemen went by
on horses--Achnatra and Major Hall and the through-other son of Lorn
Campbell. The sun, westering, turned the clean rain-washed sand in the
gutters of the street to gold, and there the children played and their
calls and rhymes and laughter made so merry a world that the boy at the
window, looking out upon it, felt a glow. He was now to be always with
these fortunate children whom he knew so well ere ever he had changed
words with them. He had a little dread of the magnitude and corners of
this dwelling that was to be his in the future, and of the old men who
sat in it all day saying noth