hey are going the
right way when they are going directly wrong."

"If I only knew the right way!" he said.

"That's true, Mr. Forrester," said Mrs. Parker. "If we only knew the
right way; and people tell you to be guided by Providence, but I say
I never know when it is Providence and when it is myself;" and she
threaded her way down the narrow stairs, followed by the rest of the
party.

III.

The dining-room, with its low roof, its crimson walls, dark furniture
and handsome fire (the fires at Cockhoolet were always handsome:
Bessie was the architect and superintended the building herself; they
never looked harum-scarum nor meaningless nor thoughtless, nor as if
they were not meant to burn; they combined taste, comfort, and, as a
consequence, economy; everything tasteful and comfortable is in the
long run economical), its table-cloth, glistening like the summit of
the Alps and laden with good things, looked a place where people even
not in love with each other might, unless naturally perverse, be very
happy.

Mrs. Parker, being from town, was in raptures with every country
eatable, especially the scones, which she found were manufactured by
Miss Ormiston herself.

"And have they," asked Mr. Parker, "the sustaining power that the
cakes made here of old had?"

"If you eat enough of them you may get to Edinburgh to-night before
you are very hungry," said John.

"The abbey cakes were unleavened," Bessie explained, "which these are
not, so that they are less substantial fare."

"What do you raise them with?" asked Mrs. Parker.

"Butter, milk and carbonate of soda," said Miss Ormiston.

"We call Bessie a doctor of the Carbon," said John: "she makes very
good scones, although you would hardly go from here to Canterbury on
the strength of one of them."

"Mr. Forrester, are you dull?" asked Jessie: "you are not saying
anything."

"I am too busy eating the holy cakes, Jessie," said Edwin: "your
sister is a master in her art."

"I say," Jessie went on, "are you ever dull at home? When I told
Bessie that you had come she was surprised, and said that you must
surely be dull at home. I am sorry for you if you are: you should come
here oftener--we are never dull here."

"Perhaps," said Edwin, "your sister thinks I come too often, as it
is."

Bessie was so deeply engaged pressing Mr. Parker to eat strawberry
jam, with cheeks the color of the fruit, that of course she could not
have heard what her sister h