igh-handed fashion if it had
occurred to her. But she was stricken silent with inarticulate joy at
the prospect of going away--especially of going across the sea just as
far as possible without getting over the edge of the world.

"But do you think he'll have me?" she said tremulously when she could
speak again.

"He'll need to," said her aunt calmly.

"Anyway, if he doesn't someone else will," said Marcella casually. To
her hitherto the world had meant Lashnagar, Pitleathy and Carlossie.
She had never been as far as Edinburgh. She had lived in a world of
friends--a world that knew her, barefoot and hungry as she was, for the
last of the Lashcairns, a world that had open doors for her everywhere.
And Aunt Janet knew about as much of life outside the wall that held her
own smouldering personality as Marcella knew.

It was only years afterwards that Marcella wondered where her aunt got
the money to buy her the clothes that came from Edinburgh--not many of
them, but things severely plain and severely expensive. She knew that
the man from Christy's came again--she knew that two great oak chests,
one from the landing and one from her mother's room, went away. Later
she missed the old weapons that used to be in the armoury at the old
grey house and that had lain in her father's bedroom where he could see
them ever since they came to the farm--great-swords and dirks and
battle-axes--that had rung out a clear message of defiance on many a
battlefield. But she did not associate their going with her own until
she was out in mid-ocean, and then she felt sickened to think what it
must have cost Aunt Janet to part from them.

In the midst of her preparations Jean told her one day that she was
going away soon.

"Going away?" she cried. "Then what will Aunt Janet do? Why, Jean, I
never thought you'd leave her," she added reproachfully.

"Ye're leavin' her yersel'," said Jean grimly. "But I'm not gaun of ma
ain accoont. The mistress hersel' was tellun me she'll not be needin' me
ony mair."

"Well! but what's she going to do, then?" said Marcella, arrested in her
careful tidying of her father's old books on the shelves. "I'm going
straight away to ask her."

But her aunt simply told her that it was no concern of hers, but that
she was going to live very quietly now.

"But who'll look after you? Who'll do the work? What will you live on?"

"I am not accustomed to being cross-questioned," said Aunt Janet in a
definite way th