the scrubbing-brush is heard in the land. In corners
where all was clean and spotless before, Mrs. M'Collop is digging with
the broom, and the maiden Boots is following her with a damp cloth.
The stair carpets are hanging on lines in the back garden, and
Susanna, with her cap rakishly on one side, is always to be seen
polishing the stair rods. Whenever we traverse the halls we are
obliged to leap over pails of suds, and Miss Diggity-Dalgety has given
us two dinners which bore a curious resemblance to washing-day repasts
in suburban America.

"Is it spring house-cleaning?" I ask Mistress M'Collop.

"Na, na," she replies hurriedly; "it's the meenisters."

On the 19th of May we are a maiden castle no longer. Black coats and
hats ring at the bell, and pass in and out of the different
apartments. The hall table is sprinkled with letters, visiting-cards,
and programmes which seem to have had the alphabet shaken out upon
them, for they bear the names of professors, doctors, reverends, and
very reverends, and fairly bristle with A. M.'s, M. A.'s, A. B.'s, D.
D.'s, and LL. D.'s. The voice of family prayer is lifted up from the
dining-room floor, and Paraphrases and hymns float down the stairs
from above. Their Graces the Lord High Commissioner and the
Marchioness of Heatherdale will arrive to-day at Holyrood Palace,
there to reside during the sittings of the General Assembly of the
Church of Scotland, and to-morrow the Royal Standard will be hoisted
at Edinburgh Castle from reveille to retreat. His Grace will hold a
levee at eleven. Directly His Grace leaves the palace after the levee,
the guard of honor will proceed by the Canongate to receive him on his
arrival at St. Giles' Church, and will then proceed to Assembly Hall
to receive him on his arrival there. The Sixth Inniskilling Dragoons
and the First Battalion Royal Scots will be in attendance, and there
will be unicorns, carricks, pursuivants, heralds, mace-bearers,
ushers, and pages, together with the Purse-bearer, and the Lyon
King-of-Arms, and the national anthem, and the royal salute; for the
palace has awakened and is "mimicking its past."

"_Should the weather be wet the troops will be cloaked at the
discretion of the commanding officers._" They print this instruction
as a matter of form, and of course every man has his mackintosh ready.
The only hope lies in the fact that this is a national function, and
"Queen's weather" is a possibility. The one personage for