that our mother loved our father's face in her, and
counted the days ere seeing it once more; and having lost it, she
is like one bewildered. 'T will all come right. Let the poor body
alone,--and do not hurt the child's heart so. We're right careless."

I had hung on tiptoe, accounting it no meanness, and I saw Margray
stare.

"Well," she murmured, "something may be done yet. 'T will go hard, if by
hook or crook Mrs. Strathsay do not have that title stick among us"; and
then, to make an end of words, she began chattering anent biases
and gores, the lace on Mary Campbell's frill, the feather on Mary
Dalhousie's bonnet,--and I left them.

I ran over to Margray's, and finding the boy awake, I dismissed his
nurses the place, and stayed and played with him and took the charge
till long past the dinner-hour, and Margray came home at length, and
then, when I had sung the child asleep again, for the night, and Margray
had shown me all the contents of her presses, the bells were ringing
nine from across the river, and I ran back as I came, and up and into my
little bed, and my heart was fit to break, and I cried till the sound of
the sobs checked me into silence. Suddenly I felt a hand fumbling down
the coverlid, and 't was Nannie, my old nurse, and her arm was laid
heavily across me.

"Dinna greet," she whispered, "dinna greet and dull your een that are
brighter noo than a' the jauds can show,--the bonny blink o' them! They
sha' na flout and fleer, the feckless queans, the hissies wha'll threep
to stan' i' your auld shoon ae day! Dinna greet, lass, dinna!"

But I rose on my arm, and stared about me in all the white moonlight of
the vacant place, and hearkened to the voices and laughter rippling up
the great staircase,--for there were gallants in belike,--and made as if
I had been crying out in my sleep.

"Oh, Nurse Nannie, is it you?" I said.

"Ay, me, Miss Ailie darling!"

"Sure I dream so deeply. I'm all as oppressed with nightmare."

But with that she brushed my hair, and tenderly bathed my face in the
bay-water, and fastened on my cap, and, sighing, tucked the coverlid
round my shoulder, and away down without a word.

The next day was my mother's dinner-party. She was in a quandary about
me, I saw, and to save words I offered to go over again and stay with
the little Graeme. So it came to pass, one time being precedent of
another, that in all the merrymakings I had small share, and spent the
greater part of tho