r." And it was here that I had a taste
of his fine temper, for he turned upon me in a sudden heat that made
him splendid and natural to the eye.

"I have not heard that my Lord Stair was over-deliberate in his own
wooing," he said.

I laughed aloud as he glowered at me, and put my hand on his shoulder,
for I liked his impetuous ways and his deil's temper.

"There, there," I said, "gang your own gate. I but wanted ye to know
what ye might expect in a wife. She'll contradict ye----"

"I don't want a wife who is an echo of myself," he retorted.

"She's jealous----"

"I wouldn't give a groat for a woman who wasn't," he responded.

"She is so extravagant," I went on, "that I never let even Sandy know
her bills."

He made no answer to this whatever, as though it were a matter beneath
discussion.

"She will forget you for days at a time while she's rhyme-making," I
went on. "She will be interested in other men until the day she dies--"
his eye darkened at this--"and to sum it up, I don't know any woman
more unsuited to you; but if she will have you, you've my consent," and
I reached out my hand to him. "God bless you," I cried, and before our
hands had parted Sandy came around the turn of the path.

"You've done just what I knew you'd do, Jock Stair," he said, glowering
first at his son and then at me, "and ye know as well as I the
foolishness of it. Take a man like this lad, who has been spoiled by an
overfond mother, and a woman like Nancy, who has had her own way since
birth, marry them to each other, and you've a magnificent basis for
trouble. Why don't you marry your cousin Isabel? You'd thoughts of it
before you left London!" he ended, in a futile way.

"I'm going to marry Nancy Stair, if she'll have me," Danvers replied,
doggedly.

"Well, well, she may not have you," Sandy replied, soothingly. "And as
she's under the lilacs you may care to join her."

Nothing passed between Danvers and Nancy on the subject of marriage
that morning, and I found at luncheon a probable explanation of the
fact by reason of her absorption in the labor training idea and the
building of an extension on the Burnside.

Between this scheme, her talk of Robert Burns, her interest in his
Grace of Borthwicke, and an absolute and unnatural silence concerning
Danvers, I was in some anxiety, and could come to no conclusion
whatever concerning the state of her feelings. I mentioned Danvers'
good looks, and she quoted me back "The Cotte