ut we were
just as happy when I rose to make the fire in the morning, and Mrs.
Pathrick came over early on washing days to "get them clothes out on the
line at a respectable hour!"

My father still teaches his Ovid, and looks to Freddy Esquillant to
succeed him. He is now first assistant and has taken a house for Agnes
Anne. In a year or two they expect to begin thinking about getting
married. But really there is no hurry. They have only been engaged
twelve years, and an immediate purpose of marriage would be considered
quite indecent haste in Eden Valley. And Aunt Jen ... is still Aunt Jen.
No man, she says, has ever proved himself worthy of her, but I myself
think that, if there is no infringement of the table of consanguinity on
the first page of the Bible after "James, by the Grace of God, King of
Great Britain, France, and Ireland," she has an eye on Duncan the
Second, when he shall shed the trappings of the school-boy and endue
himself with the virility of knee-breeches, cocked hat, and a coat with
adult tails.

At least she certainly shows more partiality to him than to any one, and
wonders incessantly how he managed to pick up so unworthy and
harum-scarum a father.

For the rest, Heathknowes stands where it did, excepting always the Wood
Parlour, which _my_ grandfather had pulled down. And where it stood the
full-rounded corn-stacks almost lean against the blind wall, so that the
maids will not pass that way unattended--for fear of Wringham Pollixfen,
or poor hot-blooded, turbulent Richard, his victim, or perhaps more
exactly the victim of his own unstable will.

And as for Irma, years have not aged her. She has the invincible gift of
youth, of lightsome, winsome, buoyant youth. She still has that way of
poising herself for flight, like a tit on a thistle, or a plume of
dandelion-down, ready to break off and float away on any wind, which I
tell her is not respectable in a married woman of her age and standing.
But my Lord Advocate does not agree with me. He rests from his
labours--not in the grave, thank goodness, but in his house on the
bright slopes of Corstorphine.

Also the Dean sings an "Amen" to his praises of Irma, but neither of the
Kirkpatricks has ever deigned to cross our doorstep.

"They were glad to be rid of you!" I tell Irma.

"Dear place!" she answers. And she does not mean either the house at
Sciennes or the Kirkpatrick mansion near the Water of Leith. She is
thinking of that once open