chintz. "And this is Miss Colquhoun!" she said, looking up with kindly penetrating eyes at the face of Pen, whose own had always a communicable and appealing candour. "I have looked at you often in the kirk, Miss Colquhoun, and thought to mysel', What a bonny lassie! What did you think of yon young minister from Perth on Sabbath? Birds! Birds, and the wisdom o' them, and the fruitful summer breezes! Lord bless my heart! fancy a young man coming here from Perth to tell us about birds and summer breezes ! As I said to my brother James, What have birds and summer breezes got to do wi' the blessed gospel?' Faith, we've had more than our share o' the summer breeze this fortnight; now that my blanket - washing's by, I'm sure the country would be nane the waur o' rain."

"You're always the busy woman, Miss Birrell!" said Norah, fanning herself with a 'Missionary Record' which the lawyer's sister always cherished for the sake of Jimmy Chalmers of New Guinea. "Do you never take a rest at all?"

"There's no rest for the wicked, Miss Norah," answered 'Tilda cheerfully, searching for the best spoons in the cupboard, bringing forth the Pekin teapot. "There's no rest for the wicked; we have Scripture sanction for it, and there's seldom any rest for the like o' me, that's only middlin' good. I'm aye thinking that when I die, it'll just be my ordinar luck if

the resurrection doesna happen on the morn's mornin'."

Pen laughed, and felt a curious gush of liking for the little woman who reminded her immediately of her mother. "I wouldn't think of that at all, if I were you, Miss Birrell; it would give any one the blues."

"It does, but there's a cure for the blues," said "Tilda blythly, measuring the tea from a lacquer caddy.

"In Buchan?" suggested Pen, who had found that amazing medical vademecum in every other house in Schawfield village.

"No, nor Buchan! In the Bible-thirtieth Psalm," replied Miss Birrell. "And how's your aunt, Miss Norah?"

"She's fine!" said Norah. "We haven't seen much of her of late since she took to carriage exercise. A carriage must be a great convenience."

"So Pen decided," answered Norah. "Sir Andrew would let the old barouche lie rotting for another generation if it hadn't been for Pen."

A host of eager questions cried in the mind of "Tilda, but she held her tongue, and while the Pekin teapot plyed, Penelope realised that the air of the afternoon had suddenly become a little chilly in the room, however it might be outside. Miss Birrell seemed watchful, and the mood of fun was clean departed for the moment. When she thought herself unobserved she scanned the stranger closely over her tea-cup edge, or under cover of a flourish of the cookies. She was looking for those faint airs that in woman the jealous

decern so rapidly-an accent of self-complacency, a trivial boast, a disparaging droop of the eyelids, vanity about a neat shoe or a well-fitting pair of gloves; a saint could not have come more creditably through the scrutiny than the unconscious Pen, who admired the Pekin teapot and showed it in her manner without a word, the subtlest kind of flattery for a lady like 'Tilda Birrell.

"I see," said their hostess in a little, having brooded darkly, "that you have gotten Peter Powrie back. His wife's quite new-fangled wi' him. They go for a walk in the forest on the week-days. Did you ever- -!"

Pen looked puzzled. "Men never walk with their wives on week-days," Norah explained to her, twinkling. "It's a solemn rite reserved for Sundays. But I'm afraid it's not so much for the company of his wife as for the welfare of my Dandie Dinmont. Peter walks at any time. He's married far too long for maudlin sentiment."

"Coming on thirty years," said 'Tilda. "It was the time when women wore the dolmans. A fine big breezy fellow he was thought I suppose because he was always blowing. If you took his word for't, there was only one man knew the breed of a dog in Scotland, and his name was Peter Powrie. And I'll allow he did know dogs. Women, too, he couldn't have got a better wife than Aggy Cameron-poor long-suffering lass! He was so daft about her, she could lead him round the country with a cobweb,that's the way with men before

ye marry them." She saw a smile on Norah's face, and laughed herself. "I'm not pretending, mind, that that's the way I'm single; no indeed! I would be glad to do the leading wi' a rope, and risk the hanging o' mysel' at the end o't. Peter Powrie was a disappointing husband for a while, but we all have our own bit failings, and I'm glad to see him back. It's real considerate o' Sir Andrew."

Norah, with a gesture of her teacup, indicated Pen. "There again, Miss Birrell, the fairy godmother! Mrs Powrie might never have had her man restored to her, nor I be owner of the darlingest of dogs, if it weren't for the magic powers of Miss Colquhoun.'

"In-deed!" exclaimed Miss Birrell, bewildered and astringent: Pen wondered why. It seemed to her, on reflection, that the lawyer's sister did not like her.

"And have you heard," asked Norah, patting the teapot-lid, as she used to do when she visited the parlour of Miss Birrell as a child, "that Paterson isn't to be a poacher any longer?"

"In the name of fortune! what's the matter wi' him?" asked Miss Birrell, recovering. "He's going to Mr Beswick's as a gamekeeper."

"Well done, Mr Beswick!" cried Miss Birrell, delighted. "I could have told him long ago there was never a cheaper way to cure a poacher, and he couldn't get a better man for the job than Paterson. swears and he drinks, he poaches and he loafs, and they

He

even say he beat his wife once, but there's not a word against his moral character."

"Beat his wife!" said Norah. "Shocking! I never heard of that."

"Perhaps she needed it," suggested Pen calmly. "I have often thought there are wives to whom a beating-not too hard but noisy-would do a great deal of good."

Miss Birrell looked at her with something like admiration. "Fancy you saying that!" she exclaimed. "I could never have the daring to admit it, but I've often thought it."

"Every woman thinks it sometimes. Of course I would never say so to a man, for it isn't every man who's qualified to use the power, and perhaps on the whole it's better to let men stick by their idea that it's chivalry to let a wife go utterly astray for the want of a little mild correction. All the same, it's as logical to whip a foolish wife as to whip a foolish child. And I know the wife of Paterson."

"There are faults on both sides," admitted 'Tilda, her favourite summing-up of such situations. "One night he came home none the better for his company, and she was ready for him in the morning, but he hurried for the first word. 'When you and me were married, Kate,' he said, 'didn't the minister make us one?' 'I suppose he did,' said Mrs Paterson. 'Then let me tell you this,' said Paterson, 'we had an awfu' skinfu' yesterday!' Another time the banker saw him throwing in

his hat at the open door o' his house, and waiting on the landing. 'What do you do that for, Paterson?' asked the banker. 'If the hat comes bungin' oot again,' said Paterson, quite joco, 'I ken the weather's coorse inside, and bide awa' till it calms. If she keeps it in, I ken she'll be glad to see me.' There's a lot o' fun in Hughy Paterson! I'm glad he's going to settle down; I suppose it's for his good, poor man! but many a one'll miss his pranks, forbye his partridges. It's very good of Mr Beswick giving him the chance."

"Once more," said Norah triumphantly, "the potent hand of the fairy godmother! Sir Andrew got Paterson the situation just to please Penelope."

This time there was no mistake about the jealousy in Miss Birrell's eyes; even Norah saw it with amusement. The jollity of their hostess fled with no returning; her manner grew punctilious; they were shown to the foot of the stair when they departed with far too ceremonious professions of the pleasure that their visit had conferred, and not too fervent invitations to repeat it when they happened to have time. "Tilda, returning, washed her tea-things furiously, and snapped the cupboard door on the Pekin teapot like a woman who never meant to bring it out again.

"And what do you think of our friend Miss Birrell?" asked Norah, as they took the shady side of the street for home,

threading their way among the hens.

"I like her," answered Pen. "She isn't dozing, and she is herself. I'm not surprised one hears so much about her."

"I like her too," said Norah. "Always did, though she treats me like a child new out of school. I don't suppose she has noticed that my hair's been up for half a dozen years. Her idol's Andy; I thought it odd that she never asked for him to-day."

"And she's a very good friend of yours, I notice," said Penelope.

"I haven't a doubt of it. What makes you think so?"

"Because she was doing her best to like me too, for your sake, and all the time would rather not."

"I think you're wrong," said Norah feebly. It was the very thought that a moment ago had given her amusement when she watched the bewildered, disapproving face of "Tilda Birrell.

Captain Cutlass, with his coat off, and his rolled-up shirtsleeves revealing a tatooed figure of a dolphin on his arm, came sauntering through the shrubbery from the kitchen garden, found the girls on the verandah fondling the Dandie Dinmont, gave a sailor's whoop for salutation, and threw himself, exhausted, in a chair. He looked at them with envy: they were cool as mermaids, being such as carry about with them their own breeze, and he was melting.

"I feel," said he to Pen, "that to-day, at least, I've earned my living. Humphrey and I have spent the most arduous afternoon at what I begin to think the degrading task of sheuching leeks. Why should Christian men, who were meant to stand upright, squat on their hunkers on a day like this, so plainly meant for swimming, and prod holes in the inoffensive earth for the sake of a wretched weed that happens to be esculent?"

"Because they like hotchpotch and cockie-leekie, I suppose," said Norah. "The curse of Eden rather spoiled us for a diet of thistles. But you haven't been sheuching leeks?" "So to speak, my dear: you mustn't be so literal. Simply to watch old Humphrey doing so was quite enough to make me sweat. But I stuck manfully to the noble, dignified, and essential business of superintendence, which is always highest paid, for some mysterious reason that I hope to learn in heaven. Meanwhile, mum's the word! let us still dissemble and pretend that superintendence calls for some peculiar kind of genius. Humphrey, poor devil! never suspects the truth or he'd have thrown a dibble at me. The fun of it is he didn't take off his coat or tuck up his sleeves, and yet he didn't see the irony of my doing it. So I brought him out a jug of beer; if the working classes don't have a sense of logic they have an

excellent capacity for beer. I felt, out there, thus sharing in the travail with nature, something of the old husbandman wrestling with the stubborn glebe for my existence; that I was a good man. It is a reflection singularly soothing. I might have been busily engaged in squeezing the means for a sybarite existence from unhappy tenantry; penalising poachers by making them do for wages what they loved to do for fun; turning gipsies away to sorn on other people less well able than myself to feed them; poking my way into village houses where I wasn't wanted. ... Oh, Pen! Pen! are you not ashamed of your position?" "Not a bit!" she answered, "but a little bored by it."

He assumed a look of apprehension. "You mustn't be bored yet," he said, "I'm just beginning to enjoy myself. Mr Birrell and Cattanach plainly begin to think there's hope for me yet; they never suspect that my concurrence with all they think good business and common-sense is due to the fact that temporarily I'm another person. For the first time, honestly, in ten years, I wish I hadn't broken up that fiddle; there's a sense of liberty that's only to be expressed by making noises. The jolly thing is to learn that, after all this time, I find it quite as easy to be a person of no importance as a landed gentleman; it's most consoling!"

"But then you never had many of the habits of a landed gentleman," Norah reminded him.

"That's so," he agreed, with pleasure. "Amn't I lucky? I don't have any habits at all, and you may take it from me that that's the secret of an equable and contented life. Never contract a habit, even a good one, or you become its slave."

Penelope put up her chin, opened her mouth and shut it again; he saw in her look the hint of a thought suppressed. "Out with it, ma'm!" he ordered. "You don't agree

with me?"

"Not having any habits is a habit in itself," she remarked with a smile; "and it's the worst of all, for nobody knows when they have you, or what you may do next. For that reason I'm going to bring our little diversion to an end. Why not make Norah play the part? She could do it ever so much better; indeed all the ideas are hers to start with. Oh, you needn't frown; you know they are! I find I don't like playing a part, in a joke, even; it seems to need a lot of cunning." She stopped, breathless.

"And so you propose to the role on to me,' said Norah, smiling. isn't quite a compliment, Pen."

Pen showed no distress. "You know very well what I mean," she said. "I'd never have been so bold, demanding all those changes, if it hadn't been for you; and I don't see why you couldn't have made them for yourself; with you it need not call for any pretence. I just feel horrid!" She grimaced