no!' cried mother: 'you really must not think of it. He
has always been brought up so honest--'

'Hem! that makes a difference. A decided disqualification for domestic
life among the Doones. But, surely, he might get over those prejudices,
madam?'

'Oh no, sir! he never can: he never can indeed. When he was only that
high, sir, he could not steal even an apple, when some wicked boys tried
to mislead him.'

'Ah,' replied the Counsellor, shaking his white head gravely; 'then I
greatly fear that his case is quite incurable. I have known such cases;
violent prejudice, bred entirely of education, and anti-economical
to the last degree. And when it is so, it is desperate: no man, after
imbibing ideas of that sort, can in any way be useful.'

'Oh yes, sir, John is very useful. He can do as much work as three other
men; and you should see him load a sledd, sir.'

'I was speaking, madam, of higher usefulness,--power of the brain and
heart. The main thing for us upon earth is to take a large view of
things. But while we talk of the heart, what is my niece Lorna
doing, that she does not come and thank me, for my perhaps too prompt
concession to her youthful fancies? Ah, if I had wanted thanks, I should
have been more stubborn.'

Lorna, being challenged thus, came up and looked at her uncle, with
her noble eyes fixed full upon his, which beneath his white eyebrows
glistened, like dormer windows piled with snow.

'For what am I to thank you, uncle?'

'My dear niece, I have told you. For removing the heaviest obstacle,
which to a mind so well regulated could possibly have existed, between
your dutiful self and the object of your affections.'

'Well, uncle, I should be very grateful, if I thought that you did
so from love of me; or if I did not know that you have something yet
concealed from me.'

'And my consent,' said the Counsellor, 'is the more meritorious, the
more liberal, frank, and candid, in the face of an existing fact, and a
very clearly established one; which might have appeared to weaker minds
in the light of an impediment; but to my loftier view of matrimony seems
quite a recommendation.'

'What fact do you mean, sir? Is it one that I ought to know?'

'In my opinion it is, good niece. It forms, to my mind, so fine a basis
for the invariable harmony of the matrimonial state. To be brief--as I
always endeavour to be, without becoming obscure--you two young people
(ah, what a gift is youth! one can never be t