n in the draper's window,
heretofore overlooked, caught our eye. "House and Garden To Let.
Inquire Within." Inquiring within with all possible speed, we found
the draper selling winseys, the draper's assistant tidying the
ribbon-box, the draper's wife sewing in one corner, and the draper's
baby playing on the clean floor. We were impressed favorably, and
entered into negotiations without delay.

"The house will be in the loaning; do you mind, ma'am?" asked the
draper. (We have long since discovered that this use of the verb is a
bequest from the Gaelic, in which there is no present tense. Man never
is, but always to be blessed, in that language, which in this
particular is not unlike old-fashioned Calvinism.)

We went out of the back door and down the green loaning, until we came
to the wee stone cottage in which the draper himself lives most of the
year, retiring for the warmer months to the back of his shop, and
eking out a comfortable income by renting his hearthstone to the
summer visitor.

The thatched roof on the wing that formed the kitchen attracted my
artist's eye, and we went in to examine the interior, which we found
surprisingly attractive. There was a tiny sitting-room, with a
fireplace and a microscopic piano; a dining-room adorned with
portraits of relatives who looked nervous when they met my eye, for
they knew that they would be turned face to the wall on the morrow;
four bedrooms, a kitchen, and a back garden so filled with vegetables
and flowers that we exclaimed with astonishment and admiration.

"But we cannot keep house in Scotland," objected Salemina. "Think of
the care! And what about the servants?"

"Why not eat at the inn?" I suggested. "Think of living in a real
loaning, Salemina! Look at the stone floor in the kitchen, and the
adorable stuffy box-bed in the wall! Look at the bust of Sir Walter in
the hall, and the chromo of Melrose Abbey by moonlight! Look at the
lintel over the front door, with a ship, moon, stars, and 1602 carved
in the stone! What is food to all this?"

Salemina agreed that it was hardly worth considering; and in truth so
many landladies had refused to receive her as a tenant that day, that
her spirits were rather low, and she was uncommonly flexible.

"It is the lintel and the back garden that rents the hoose," remarked
the draper complacently in broad Scotch that I cannot reproduce. He is
a house-agent as well as a draper, and went on to tell us that when he
had