Penelope's Experiences in Scotland ...................................................................................................................1

Kate Douglas Wiggin ...............................................................................................................................1

Part FirstIn Town. ................................................................................................................................1

Chapter I. A Triangular Alliance.............................................................................................................2

Chapter II. Edina, Scotia's Darling Seat..................................................................................................5

Chapter III. A vision in Princes Street. ....................................................................................................8

Chapter IV. Susanna Crum cudna say...................................................................................................12

Chapter V. We emulate the Jackdaw.....................................................................................................15

Chapter VI. Edinburgh society, past and present. ..................................................................................18

Chapter VII. Francesca meets th' unconquer'd Scot..............................................................................22

Chapter VIII. `What made th' Assembly shine?' ....................................................................................26

Chapter IX. Omnia presbyteria est divisa in partes tres. ........................................................................29

Chapter X. Mrs. M'Collop as a sermontaster. ......................................................................................33

Chapter XI. Holyrood awakens. .............................................................................................................35

Chapter XII. Farewell to Edinburgh......................................................................................................41

Chapter XIII. The spell of Scotland. ......................................................................................................43

Part SecondIn the Country................................................................................................................48

Chapter XIV. The wee theekit hoosie in the loaning. ............................................................................48

Chapter XV. Jane Grieve and her grievances........................................................................................52

Chapter XVI. The path that led to Crummylowe. ..................................................................................57

Chapter XVII. Playing Sir Patrick Spens. ..............................................................................................59

Chapter XVIII. Paris comes to Pettybaw. ..............................................................................................66

Chapter XIX. Fowk o' Fife....................................................................................................................69

Chapter XX. A Fifeshire teaparty. .......................................................................................................74

Chapter XXI. International bickering....................................................................................................77

Chapter XXII. Francesca entertains the greeneyed monster...............................................................81

Chapter XXIII. Ballad revels at Rowardennan. .....................................................................................85

Chapter XXIV. Old songs and modern instances..................................................................................89

Chapter XXV. A treaty between nations...............................................................................................92

Chapter XXVI. `Scotland's burning! Look out!' ....................................................................................94

Chapter XXVII. Three magpies and a marriage....................................................................................96

We have travelled together before, Salemina, Francesca, and I, and we know the very worst there is to know

about one another. After this point has been reached, it is as if a triangular marriage had taken place, and,

with the honeymoon comfortably over, we slip along in thoroughly friendly fashion. I use no warmer word

than`friendly' because, in the first place, the highest tides of feeling do not visit the coasts of triangular

alliances; and because, in the second place, `friendly' is a word capable of putting to the blush many a more

Every one knows of our experiences in England, for we wrote volumes of letters concerning them, the which

were widely circulated among our friends at the time, and read aloud under the evening lamps in the several

Salemina returned to Boston for the winter, to find, to her amazement, that for forty odd years she had been

On arriving in New York, Francesca discovered that the young lawyer whom for six months she had been

advising to marry somebody more worthy than herself was at last about to do it. This was somewhat in the

nature of a shock, for Francesca had been in the habit, ever since she was seventeen, of giving her lovers

similar advice, and up to this time no one of them has ever taken it. She therefore has had the not unnatural

hope, I think, of organising at one time or another all these disappointed and faithful swains into a celibate

brotherhood; and perhaps of driving by the interesting monastery with her husband and calling his attention

modestly to the fact that these poor monks were filling their barren lives with deeds of piety, trying to

remember their Creator with such assiduity that they might, in time, forget Her.

Her chagrin was all the keener at losing this last aspirant to her hand in that she had almost persuaded herself

that she was as fond of him as she was likely to be of anybody, and that on the whole she had better marry

Fortunately she had not communicated this gleam of hope by letter, feeling, I suppose, that she would like to

see for herself the light of joy breaking over his pale cheek. The scene would have been rather pretty and

touching, but meantime the Worm had turned and despatched a letter to the Majestic at the quarantine station,

telling her that he had found a less reluctant bride in the person of her intimate friend Miss Rosa Van Brunt;

Salemina says she was somewhat constrained for a week and a trifle cynical for a fortnight, but that

afterwards her spirits mounted on ever ascending spirals to impossible heights, where they have since

remained. It appears from all this that although she was piqued at being taken at her word, her heart was not

in the least damaged. It never was one of those fragile things which have to be wrapped in cotton, and

preserved from the slightest blowFrancesca's heart. It is made of excellent stout, durable material, and I

often tell her with the care she takes of it, and the moderate strain to which it is subjected, it ought to be as

As for me, the scene of my own lovestory is laid in America and England, and has nought to do with

Edinburgh. It is far from finished; indeed, I hope it will be the longest serial on record, one of those charming

tales that grow in interest as chapter after chapter unfolds, until at the end we feel as if we could never part

I should be, at this very moment, Mrs. William Beresford, a highly respectable young matron who painted

rather good pictures in her spinster days, when she was Penelope Hamilton of the great American

workingclass, Unlimited; but first Mrs. Beresford's dangerous illness and then her death, have kept my dear

boy a willing prisoner in Cannes, his heart sadly torn betwixt his love and duty to his mother and his desire to

be with me. The separation is virtually over now, and we two, alas! have ne'er a mother or a father between

us, so we shall not wait many months before beginning to comfort each other in good earnest.

Meantime Salemina and Francesca have persuaded me to join their forces, and Mr. Beresford will follow us

to Scotland in a few short weeks, when we shall have established ourselves in the country.

We are overjoyed at being together again, we three women folk. As I said before, we know the worst of one

Francesca does not like an early morning start. Salemina refuses to arrive late anywhere. Penelope prefers to

Francesca scorns to travel third class. So does Salemina, but she will if urged.

Penelope hates a fourwheeler. Salemina is nervous in a hansom. Francesca prefers a barouche or a landau.

Salemina likes a steady fire in the grate. Penelope opens a window and fans herself.

Salemina inclines to instructive and profitable expeditions. Francesca loves processions and sightseeing.

Salemina likes history. Francesca loves fiction. Penelope adores poetry and detests facts.

Penelope likes substantial breakfasts. Francesca dislikes the sight of food in the morning.

In the matter of breakfasts, when we have leisure to assert our individual tastes, Salemina prefers tea,

Francesca cocoa, and I, coffee. We can never, therefore, be served with a large comfortable pot of anything,

but are confronted instead with a caravan of silver jugs, china jugs, bowls of hard and soft sugar, hot milk,

cold milk, hot water, and cream, while each in her secret heart wishes that the other two were less exigeante

This does not sound promising, but it works perfectly well in practice by the exercise of a little flexibility.

As we left dear old Dovermarle Street and Smith's Private Hotel behind, and drove to the station to take the

Flying Scotsman, we indulged in floods of reminiscence over the joys of travel we had tasted together in the

past, and talked with lively anticipation of the new experiences awaiting us in the land of heather.

While Salemina went to purchase the three firstclass tickets, I superintended the porters as they disposed our

luggage in the van, and in so doing my eye lighted upon a thirdclass carriage which was, for a wonder,

clean, comfortable, and vacant. Comparing it hastily with the firstclass compartment being held by

Francesca, I found that it differed only in having no carpet on the floor, and a smaller number of buttons in

the upholstering. This was really heartrending when the difference in fare for three persons would be at least

twenty dollars. What a delightful sum to put aside for a rainy day!that is, be it understood, what a

delightful sum to put aside and spend on the first rainy day! for that is the way we always interpret the

When Salemina returned with the tickets, she found me, as usual, bewailing our extravagance.

Francesca descended suddenly from her post, and, wresting the tickets from her duenna, exclaimed, "'I know

that I can save the country, and I know no other man can!' as William Pitt said to the Duke of Devonshire. I

have had enough of this argument. For six months of last year we discussed travelling third class and

continued to travel first. Get into that clean hardseated, ill upholstered thirdclass carriage immediately,

both of you; save room enough for a mother with two babies, and man carrying a basket of fish, and an old

woman with five pieces of handluggage and a dog; meanwhile I will exchange the tickets."

So saying, she disappeared rapidly among the throng of passengers, guards, porters, newspaper boys, golfers

with bags of clubs, young ladies with bicycles, and old ladies with tin hatboxes.

"What decision, what swiftness of judgment, what courage and energy!" murmured Salemina. "Isn't she

Francesca rejoined us just as the guard was about to lock us in, and flung herself down, quite breathless from

"Well, we are travelling third for once, and the money is saved, or at least it is ready to spend again at the first

opportunity. The man didn't wish to exchange the tickets at all. He says it is never done. I told him they were

bought by a very inexperienced American lady (that is you, Salemina) who knew almost nothing of the

distinctions between first and third class, and naturally took the best, believing it to be none too good for a

citizen of the greatest republic on the face of the earth. He said the tickets had been stamped on. I said so

should I be if I returned without exchanging them. He was a very dense person, and didn't see my joke at all,

but then, it is true, there were thirteen men in line behind me, with the train starting in three minutes, and

there is nothing so debilitating to a naturally weak sense of humour as selling tickets behind a grating, so I am

not really vexed with him. There! we are quite comfortable, pending the arrival of the babies, the dog, and the

fish, and certainly no vendor of periodic literature will dare approach us while we keep these books in

She had Laurence Hutton's Literary Landmarks and Royal Edinburgh, by Mrs. Oliphant; I had Lord

Cockburn's Memorials of his Time; and somebody had given Salemina, at the moment of leaving London, a

work on `Scotias's darling seat,' in three huge volumes. When all this printed matter was heaped on the top of

Salemina's holdall on the platform, the guard had asked, "Do you belong to these books, ma'am?"

"We may consider ourselves injured in going from London to Edinburgh in a thirdclass carriage in eight or

ten hours, but listen to this," said Salemina, who had opened one of her large volumes at random when the

"'The Edinburgh and London Stagecoach begins on Monday, 13th October 1712. All that desire ... let them

repair to the Coach and Horses at the head of the Canongate every Saturday, or the Black Swan in Holborn

every other Monday, at both of which places they may be received in a coach which performs the whole

journey in thirteen days without any stoppage (if God permits) having eighty able horses. Each passenger

paying 4 pounds, 10 shillings for the whole journey, allowing each 20 lbs. weight and all above to pay 6

pence per lb. The coach sets off at six in the morning' (you could never have caught it, Francesca!), `and is

performed by Henry Harrison.' And here is a `modern improvement,' fortytwo years later. In July 1754, the

Edinburgh Courant advertises the stagecoach drawn by six horses, with a postilion on one of the leaders, as

a `new, genteel, twoend glass machine, hung on steel springs, exceedingly light and easy, to go in ten days

in summer and twelve in winter. Passengers to pay as usual. Performed (if God permits) by your dutiful

servant, Hosea Eastgate. CARE IS TAKEN OF SMALL PARCELS ACCORDING TO THEIR VALUE.'"

"It would have been a long, wearisome journey," said I contemplatively; "but, nevertheless, I wish we were

"What would have been happening, Salemina?" asked Francesca politely, but with no real desire to know.

"The Union had been already established five years," began Salemina intelligently.

Salemina is used to these interruptions and eruptions of illiteracy on our part. I think she rather enjoys them,

as in the presence of such complete ignorance as ours her lamp of knowledge burns all the brighter.

"I know all about Anne!" exclaimed Francesca. "She came from the Midnight Sun country, or up that way.

She was very extravagant, and had something to do with Jingling Geordie in The Fortunes of Nigel. It is

"Quite marvellous," said Salemina dryly; "or at least the state in which it comes back is marvellous. I am not

a stickler for dates, as you know, but if you could only contrive to fix a few periods in your minds, girls, just

in a general way, you would not be so shamefully befogged. Your Anne of Denmark, Francesca, was the wife

of James VI. of Scotland, who was James I. of England, and she died a hundred years before the Anne I

mean,the last of the Stuarts, you know. My Anne came after William and Mary, and before the Georges."

But this was too much even for Salemina's equanimity, and she retired behind her book in dignified

displeasure, while Francesca and I meekly looked up the Annes in a genealogical table, and tried to decide

The weather that greeted us on our unheralded arrival in Scotland was of the precise sort offered by

John Knox records of those memorable days: `The very face of heaven did manifestlie speak what comfort

was brought to this country with hirto wit, sorrow, dolour, darkness and all impietyfor in the memorie

of man never was seen a more dolorous face of the heavens than was seen at her arryvall . . . the myst was so

thick that skairse micht onie man espy another; and the sun was not seyn to shyne two days befoir nor two

We could not see Edina's famous palaces and towers because of the haar, that damp, chilling, drizzling,

dripping fog or mist which the east wind summons from the sea; but we knew that they were there, shrouded

in the heart of that opaque, mysterious greyness, and that before many hours our eyes would feast upon their

Perhaps it was the weather, but I could think of nothing but poor Queen Mary! She had drifted into my

imagination with the haar, so that I could fancy her homesick gaze across the water as she murmured, `Adieu,

ma chere France! Je ne vous verray jamais plus!' could fancy her saying as in Allan Cunningham's verse:

And then I recalled Mary's first goodnight in Edinburgh: that `serenade of 500 rascals with vile fiddles and

rebecks'; that singing, `in bad accord,' of Protestant psalms by the wet crowd beneath the palace windows,

while the fires on Arthur's Seat shot flickering gleams of welcome through the dreary fog. What a lullaby for

It is but just to remember the `indefatigable and undissuadable' John Knox's statement, `the melody lyked her

weill, and she willed the same to be continewed some nightis after.' For my part, however, I distrust John

Knox's musical feeling, and incline sympathetically to the Sieur de Brantome's account, with its `vile fiddles'

and `discordant psalms,' although his judgment was doubtless a good deal depressed by what he called the si

Ah well, I was obliged to remember, in order to be reasonably happy myself, that Mary had a gay heart, after

all; that she was but nineteen; that, though already a widow, she did not mourn her young husband as one

who could not be comforted; and that she must soon have been furnished with merrier music than the psalms,

for another of the sour comments of the time is, `Our Queen weareth the dule [weeds], but she can dance

These were my thoughts as we drove through invisible streets in the Edinburgh haar, turned into what proved

next day to be a Crescent, and drew up to an invisible house with a visible number 22 gleaming over a door

which gaslight transformed into a probability. We alighted, and though we could scarcely see the driver's

outstretched hand, he was quite able to discern a halfcrown, and demanded three shillings.

The noise of our cab had brought Mrs. M'Collop to the door,good (or at least pretty good) Mrs. M'Collop,

to whose apartments we had been commended by English friends who had never occupied them.

Dreary as it was without, all was comfortable withindoors, and a cheery (oneandsixpenny) fire crackled

in the grate. Our private drawingroom was charmingly furnished, and so large that, notwithstanding the

presence of a piano, two sofas, five small tables, cabinets, desks, and chairs,not forgetting a dainty five

"If this is a typical Scotch lodging, I like it; and if it is Scotch hospitality to lay the cloth and make the fire

before it is asked for, then I call it simply Arabian in character!" and Salemina drew off her damp gloves, and

"And isn't it delightful that the bill doesn't come in for a whole week?" asked Francesca. "We have only our

English experiences on which to found our knowledge, and all is delicious mystery. The tea may be a present

from Mrs. M'Collop, and the sugar may not be an extra; the fire may be included in the rent of the apartment,

and the piano may not be taken away tomorrow to enhance the attractions of the diningroom floor." (It was

Francesca, you remember, who had `warstled' with the itemised accounts at Smith's Private Hotel in London,

and she who was always obliged to turn pounds, shillings, and pence into dollars and cents before she could

"Come and look at the flowers in my bedroom," I called, "four great boxes full! Mr. Beresford must have

ordered the carnations, because he always does; but where did the roses come from, I wonder?"

In a moment she returned with the message, "There will be a letter in the box, mam."

"It seems to me the letter should be in the box now, if it is ever to be," I thought, and I presently drew this

`Lady Baird sends these Scotch roses as a small return for the pleasure she has received from Miss Hamilton's

pictures. Lady Baird will give herself the pleasure of calling tomorrow; meantime she hopes that Miss

"The celebrated Miss Hamilton's undistinguished party presents its humble compliments to Lady Baird,"

chanted Francesca, "and having no engagements whatever, and small hope of any, will dine with her on any

and every evening she may name. Miss Hamilton's party will wear its best clothes, polish its mental jewels,

and endeavour in every possible way not to injure the gifted Miss Hamilton's reputation among the Scottish

I waited in wellgrounded anxiety, for I had no idea that she knew her name, or that if she had ever heard it,

she could say it; but, to my surprise, she answered almost immediately, "Susanna Crum, mam!"

What a joy it is in a vexatious world, where things `gang aft agley,' to find something absolutely right.

If I had devoted years to the subject, having the body of Susanna Crum before my eyes every minute of the

time for inspiration, Susanna Crum is what I should have named that maid. Not a vowel could be added, not a

consonant omitted. I said so when first I saw her, and weeks of intimate acquaintance only deepened my

When we awoke next morning the sun had forgotten itself and was shining in at Mrs. M'Collop's back

We should have arisen at once to burn sacrifices and offer oblations, but we had seen the sun frequently in

America, and had no idea (poor fools!) that it was anything to be grateful for, so we accepted it, almost

When I speak of Edinburgh sunshine I do not mean, of course, any such burning, wholesouled, ardent

warmth of beam as one finds in countries where they make a specialty of climate. It is, generally speaking, a

halfhearted, uncertain ray, as pale and transitory as a martyr's smile; but its faintest gleam, or its most

puerile attempt to gleam, is admired and recorded by its welldisciplined constituency. Not only that, but at

the first timid blink of the sun the true Scotsman remarks smilingly, `I think now we shall be having settled

weather!' It is a pathetic optimism, beautiful but quite groundless, and leads one to believe in the story that

when Father Noah refused to take Sandy into the ark, he sat down philosophically outside, saying, with a

glance at the clouds, `Aweel! the day's just aboot the ord'nar', an' I wouldna won'er if we saw the sun afore

But what loyal son of Edina cares for these transatlantic gibes, and where is the dweller within her royal gates

who fails to succumb to the sombre beauty of that old grey town of the North? `Grey! why, it is grey or grey

and gold, or grey and gold and blue, or grey and gold and blue and green, or grey and gold and blue and

green and purple, according as the heaven pleases and you choose your ground! But take it when it is most

So says one of her lovers, and so the great army of lovers would say, had they the same gift of language; for

We ate a hasty breakfast that first morning, and prepared to go out for a walk into the great unknown, perhaps

the most pleasurable sensation in the world. Francesca was ready first, and, having mentioned the fact several

times ostentatiously, she went into the drawingroom to wait and read the Scotsman. When we went thither a

"She is below, of course," said Salemina. "She fancies that we shall feel more ashamed at our tardiness if we

There was no one in the hall, however, save Susanna, who inquired if we would see the cook before going

"We have no time now, Susanna," I remarked. "We are anxious to have a walk before the weather changes, if

possible, but we shall be out for luncheon and in for dinner, and Mrs. M'Collop may give us anything she

Mrs. M'Collop appeared from the basement, and vouchsafed the information that she had seen `the young

"Running after the regiment!" repeated Salemina automatically. "What a reversal of the laws of nature? Why,

We learned in what direction the soldiers had gone, and pursuing the same path found the young lady on the

corner of a street near by. She was quite unabashed. "You don't know what you have missed!" she said

excitedly. "Let us get into this tram, and possibly we can head them off somewhere. They may be going into

battle, and if so, my heart's blood is at their service. It is one of those experiences that come only once in a

lifetime. There were pipes and there were kilts! (I didn't suppose they ever really wore them outside of the

theatre!) When you have seen the kilts swinging, Salemina, you will never be the same woman afterwards!

You never expected to see the Olympian gods walking, did you? Perhaps you thought they always sat on

practicable rocks and made stiff gestures, from the elbow, as they do in the Wagner operas? Well, these gods

walked, if you can call the inspired gait a walk! If there is a single spinster left in Scotland, it is because none

of these ever asked her to marry him. Ah, how grateful I ought to be that I am free to say `yes', if a kilt ever

asks me to be his! Poor Penelope, yoked to your commonplace trousered Beresford! (I wish the tram would

go faster!) You must capture one of them, by fair means or foul, Penelope, and Salemina and I will hold him

down while you paint him,there they are, they are there somewhere, don't you hear them?"

There they were indeed, filing down the grassy slopes of the Gardens, swinging across one of the stone

bridges, and winding up the Castlehill to the Esplanade like a long glittering snake; the streamers of their

Highland bonnets waving, their arms glistening in the sun, and the bagpipes playing `The March of the

Cameron Men.' The pipers themselves were mercifully hidden from us on that first occasion, and it was well,

It was in Princes Street that we had alighted,named thus for the prince who afterwards became George

IV.and I hope he was, and is, properly grateful. It ought never to be called a street, this most magnificent

of terraces, and the world has cause to bless that interdict of the Court of Session in 1774 which prevented the

Gradgrinds of the day from erecting buildings along its south side, a sordid scheme that would have been

It was an envious Glasgow body who said grudgingly, as he came out of Waverley Station, and gazed along

its splendid length for the first time, "Weel, wi' a' their haverin', it's but half a street onyway!"which always

reminded me of the Western farmer who came from his native plains to the beautiful Berkshire hills. "I've

always heard o' this scenery," he said. "Blamed if I can find any scenery; but if there was, nobody could see

To think that not so much more than a hundred years ago Princes Street was nought but a straight country

We looked down over the grassy chasm that separates the New from the Old Town; looked our first on

Arthur's Seat, that crouching lion of a mountain; saw the Corstorphine Hill, and Calton heights, and Salisbury

Crags, and finally that stupendous bluff of rock that culminates so majestically in Edinburgh Castle. There is

something else which, like Susanna Crum's name, is absolutely and ideally right! Stevenson calls it one of the

most satisfactory crags in naturea Bass rock upon dry land, rooted in a garden, shaken by passing trains,

carrying a crown of battlements and turrets, and describing its warlike shadow over the liveliest and brightest

thoroughfare of the new town. It dominates the whole countryside from water and land. The men who would

have the courage to build such a castle in such a spot are all dead; all dead, and the world is infinitely more

comfortable without them. They are all gone, and no more like unto them will ever be born, and we can most

of us count upon dying safely in our beds, of diseases bred of modern civilisation. But I am glad that those

old barbarians, those rudimentary creatures working their way up into the divine likeness, when they were not

hanging, drawing, quartering, torturing, and chopping their neighbours, and using their heads in conventional

patterns on the tops of gateposts, did devote their leisure intervals to rearing fortresses like this. Edinburgh

Castle could not be conceived, much less built, nowadays, when all our energy is consumed in bettering the

condition of the `submerged tenth'! What did they care about the `masses,' that `regal race that is now no

more,' when they were hewing those blocks of rugged rock and piling them against the skyline on the top of

that great stone mountain! It amuses me to think how much more picturesque they left the world, and how

much better we shall leave it; though if an artist were requested to distribute individual awards to different

generations, you could never persuade him to give first prizes to the centuries that produced steam laundries,

What did they reck of Peace Congresses and bloodless arbitrations when they lighted the beaconfires,

flaming out to the gudeman and his sons ploughing or sowing in the Lang Dykes the news that their `ancient

I am the most peaceful person in the world, but the Castle was too much for my imagination. I was mounted

and off and away from the first moment I gazed upon its embattled towers, heard the pipers in the distance,

and saw the Black Watch swinging up the green steps where the huge fortress `holds its state.' The modern

world had vanished, and my steed was galloping, galloping, galloping back into the

`To arms! Let every banner in Scotland float defiance to the breeze!' (So I heard my newborn imaginary

spirit say to my real one.) `Yes, and let the Deacon Convener unfurl the sacred Blue Blanket, under which

every liege burgher of the kingdom is bound to answer summons! The balefires are gleaming, giving alarm

to Hume, Haddington, Dunbar, Dalkeith, and Eggerhope. Rise, Stirling, Fife, and the North! All Scotland will

be under arms in two hours. One balefire: the English are in motion! Two: they are advancing! Four in a

row: they are of great strength! All men in arms west of Edinburgh muster there! All eastward, at

Haddington! And every Englishman caught in Scotland is lawfully the prisoner of whoever takes him!' (What

am I saying? I love Englishmen, but the spell is upon me!) `Come on, Macduff!' (The only suitable and

familiar challenge my warlike tenant can summon at the moment.) `I am the son of a Gael! My dagger is in

my belt, and with the guid broadsword at my side I can with one blow cut a man in twain! My bow is cut

from the wood of the yews of Glenure; the shaft is from the wood of Lochetive, the feathers from the great

golden eagles of Locktreigside! My arrowhead was made by the smiths of the race of Macphedran! Come on,

And now a shopkeeper has filled his window with royal Stuart tartans, and I am instantly a Jacobite.

It is the eve of the battle of Prestonpans. Is it not under the Rock of Dunsappie on yonder Arthur's Seat that

our Highland army will encamp tonight? At dusk the prince will hold a council of his chiefs and nobles (I

am a chief and a noble), and at daybreak we shall march through the old hedgerows and woods of

Duddingston, pipes playing and colours flying, bonnie Charlie at the head, his claymore drawn and the

I hope that those in authority will never attempt to convene a Peace Congress in Edinburgh, lest the influence

of the Castle be too strong for the delegates. They could not resist it nor turn their backs upon it, since, unlike

other ancient fortresses, it is but a stone'sthrow from the front windows of all the hotels. They might mean

never so well, but they would end by buying dirk hatpins and claymore brooches for their wives, their

daughters would all run after the kilted regiment and marry as many of the pipers as asked them, and before

While I was rhapsodising, Salemina and Francesca were shopping in the Arcade, buying some of the

cairngorms, and Tam O'Shanter purses, and models of Burns's cottage, and copies of Marmion in plaided

covers, and thistle beltbuckles, and bluebell penwipers, with which we afterwards inundated our native land.

When my warlike mood had passed, I sat down upon the steps of the Scott monument and watched the

passersby in a sort of waking dream. I suppose they were the usual professors and doctors and ministers

who are wont to walk up and down the Edinburgh streets, with a sprinkling of lairds and leddies of high

degree and a few Americans looking at the shop windows to choose their clan tartans; but for me they did not

exist. In their places stalked the ghosts of kings and queens and knights and nobles; Columba, Abbot of Iona;

Queen Margaret and Malcolmshe the sweetest saint in all the throng; King David riding towards

Drumsheugh forest on Holy Rood day, with his horns and hounds and huntsmen following close behind;

Anne of Denmark and Jingling Geordie; Mary Stuart in all her girlish beauty, with the four Maries in her

train; and lurking behind, Bothwell, `that ower sune stepfaither,' and the murdered Rizzio and Darnley; John

Knox, in his black Geneva cloak; Bonnie Prince Charlie and Flora Macdonald; lovely Annabella Drummond;

Robert the Bruce; George Heriot with a banner bearing on it the words `I distribute chearfully'; James I.

carrying The King's Quair; Oliver Cromwell; and a long line of heroes, martyrs, humble saints, and princely

Behind them, regardless of precedence, came the Ploughman Poet and the Ettrick Shepherd, Boswell and

Dr.Johnson, Dr.John Brown and Thomas Carlyle, Lady Nairne and Drummond of Hawthornden, Allan

Ramsay and Sir Walter; and is it not a proof of the Wizard's magic art, that side by side with the wraiths of

these real people walked, or seemed to walk, the Fair Maid of Perth, Jeanie Deans, Meg Merrilies, Guy

Mannering, Ellen, Marmion, and a host of others so sweetly familiar and so humanly dear that the very

Life at Mrs. M'Collop's apartments in 22 Breadalbane Terrace is about as simple, comfortable, dignified, and

Mrs. M'Collop herself is neat, thrifty, precise, tolerably genial, and `verra releegious.'

Her partner, who is also the cook, is a person introduced to us as Miss Diggity. We afterwards learned that

this is spelled Dalgety, but it is not considered good form, in Scotland, to pronounce the names of persons

and places as they are written. When, therefore, I allude to the cook, which will be as seldom as possible, I

shall speak of her as Miss DiggityDalgety, so that I shall be presenting her correctly both to the eye and to

the ear, and giving her at the same time a hyphenated name, a thing which is a secret object of aspiration in

In selecting our own letters and parcels from the common stock on the hall table, I perceive that most of our

fellowlodgers are hyphenated ladies, whose visitingcards diffuse the intelligence that in their single

persons two ancient families and fortunes are united. On the ground floor are the Misses HepburnSciennes

(pronounced HebburnSheens); on the floor above us are Miss Colquhoun (Cohoon) and her cousin Miss

CockburnSinclair (Coburn Sinkler). As soon as the HepburnSciennes depart, Mrs. M'Collop expects Mrs.

Menzies of Kilconquhar, of whom we shall speak as Mrs. Mingess of Kinyuchar. There is not a man in the

house; even the Boots is a girl, so that 22 Breadalbane Terrace is as truly a castra puellarum as was ever the

We talked with Miss DiggityDalgety on the evening of our first day at Mrs. M'Collop's, when she came up

to know our commands. As Francesca and Salemina were both in the room, I determined to be as Scotch as

possible, for it is Salemina's proud boast that she is taken for a native of every country she visits.

"We shall not be entertaining at present, Miss Diggity," I said, "so you can give us just the ordinary

dishes,no doubt you are accustomed to them: scones, baps or bannocks with marmalade, finnanhaddie or

kippered herring for breakfast; tea,of course we never touch coffee in the morning" (here Francesca started

with surprise); "porridge, and we like them well boiled, please" (I hope she noted the plural pronoun;

Salemina did, and blanched with envy); "minced collops for luncheon, or a nice little blackfaced chop;

Scotch broth, pease brose or cockyleekie soup at dinner, and haggis now and then, with a cold shape for

dessert. That is about the sort of thing we are accustomed to,just plain Scotch living."

I was impressing Miss DiggityDalgety,I could see that clearly; but Francesca spoiled the effect by

inquiring, maliciously, if we could sometimes have a howtowdy wi' drappit eggs, or her favourite dish, wee

Here Salemina was obliged to poke the fire in order to conceal her smiles, and the cook probably suspected

that Francesca found howtowdy in the Scotch glossary; but we amused each other vastly, and that is our

Miss DiggityDalgety's forebears must have been exposed to foreign influences, for she interlards her

culinary conversation with French terms, and we have discovered that this is quite common. A `jigget' of

mutton is of course a gigot, and we have identified an `ashet' as an assiette. The `petticoat tails' she requested

me to buy at the confectioner's were somewhat more puzzling, but when they were finally purchased by

Susanna Crum they appeared to be ordinary little cakes; perhaps, therefore, petits gastels, since gastel is an

old form of gateau, as was bel for beau. Susanna, on her part, speaks of the wardrobe in my bedroom as an

`awmry.' It certainly contains no weapons, so cannot be an armoury, and we conjecture that her word must be

"That was a remarkable touch about the blackfaced chop," laughed Salemina, when Miss DiggityDalgety

"I am sure they must," I asserted stoutly, "for I passed a flesher's on my way home, and saw a sign with

`Prime BlackFaced Mutton' printed on it. I also saw `Fed Veal,' but I forgot to ask the cook for it."

"We ought really to have kept house in Edinburgh," observed Francesca, looking up from the Scotsman.

"One can get a `self contained residential flat' for twenty pounds a month. We are such an enthusiastic trio

that a selfcontained flat would be everything to us; and if it were not fully furnished, here is a firm that

wishes to sell a `composite bed' for six pounds, and a `gent's stuffed easy' for five. Added to these

inducements there is somebody who advertises that parties who intend `displenishing' at the Whit Term

would do well to consult him, as he makes a specialty of secondhanded furniture and `cyclealities.' What are

Susanna Crum is a most estimable young woman, clean, respectful, willing, capable, and methodical, but as a

Bureau of Information she is painfully inadequate. Barring this single limitation she seems to be a

treasurehouse of all good practical qualities; and being thus clad and panoplied in virtue, why should she be

She wears an expression which can mean only one of two things: either she has heard of the national

tomahawk and is afraid of violence on our part, or else her mother was frightened before she was born. This

applies in general to her walk and voice and manner, but is it fear that prompts her eternal `I cudna say,' or is

it perchance Scotch caution and prudence? Is she afraid of projecting her personality too indecently far? Is it

the indirect effect of heresy trials on her imagination? Does she remember the thumbscrew of former

generations? At all events, she will neither affirm nor deny, and I am putting her to all sorts of tests, hoping to

Salemina thinks that our American accent may confuse her. Of course she means Francesca's and mine, for

she has none; although we have tempered ours so much for the sake of the natives, that we can scarcely

understand each other any more. As for Susanna's own accent, she comes from the heart of Aberdeenshire,

We naturally wish to identify all the national dishes; so, "Is this cockle soup, Susanna?" I ask her, as she

Then finally, in despair, as she handed me a boiled potato one day, I fixed my searching Yankee brown eyes

on her bluePresbyterian, noncommittal ones, and asked, "What is this vegetable, Susanna?"

In an instant she withdrew herself, her soul, her ego, so utterly that I felt myself gazing at an inscrutable stone

This was too much! Her mother may have been frightened, very badly frightened, but this was more that I

could endure without protest. The plain boiled potato is practically universal. It is not only common to all

temperate climates, but it has permeated all classes of society. I am confident that the plain boiled potato has

been one of the chief constituents in the building up of that frame in which Susanna Crum conceals her

opinions and emotions. I remarked, therefore, as an, apparent afterthought, "Why, it is a potato, is it not,

What do you think she replied, when thus hunted into a corner, pushed against a wall, driven to the very

confines of her personal and national liberty? She subjected the potato to a second careful scrutiny, and

Now there is no inherited physical terror in this. It is the concentrated essence of intelligent reserve, caution,

and obstinacy; it is a conscious intellectual hedging; it is a dogged and determined attempt to build up

barriers of defence between the questioner and the questionee: it must be, therefore, the offspring of the

Once again, after establishing an equally obvious fact, I succeeded in wringing from her the reluctant

admission, "It depends," but she was so shattered by the bulk and force of this outgo, so fearful that in some

way she had imperilled her life or reputation, so anxious concerning the effect that her unwilling testimony

might have upon unborn generations, that she was of no real service the rest of the day.

I wish that the Lord Advocate, or some modern counterpart of Braxfield, the hanging judge, would summon

Susanna Crum as a witness in an important case. He would need his longest plummet to sound the depths of

"Come, come, my girl! you must answer the questions put you by the court. You have been an inmate of the

prisoner's household since your earliest consciousness. He provided you with food, lodging, and clothing

during your infancy and early youth. You have seen him on annual visits to your home, and watched him as

he performed the usual parental functions for your younger brothers and sisters. I therefore repeat, is the

"This is really beyond credence! What do you conceive to be the idea involved in the word `father,' Susanna

And this, a few hundred years earlier, would have been the natural and effective moment for the

I do not wish to be understood as defending these uncomfortable appliances. They would never have been

needed to elicit information from me, for I should have spent my nights inventing matter to confess in the

daytime. I feel sure that I should have poured out such floods of confessions and retractations that if all

Scotland had been one listening ear it could not have heard my tale. I am only wondering if, in the extracting

of testimony from the common mind, the thumbscrew might not have been more necessary with some nations

Invitations had been pouring in upon us since the delivery of our letters of introduction, and it was now the

evening of our debut in Edinburgh society. Francesca had volunteered to perform the task of leaving cards,

ordering a private victoria for the purpose, and arraying herself in purple and fine linen.

"Much depends upon the first impression," she had said. "Miss Hamilton's `party' may not be gifted, but it is

welldressed. My hope is that some of our future hostesses will be looking from the secondstory

frontwindows. If they are, I can assure them in advance that I shall be a national advertisement."

It is needless to remark that as it began to rain heavily as she was leaving the house, she was obliged to send

back the open carriage, and order, to save time, one of the public cabs from the stand in the Terrace.

"Would you mind having the lamiter, being first in line?" asked Susanna of Salemina, who had transmitted

When Salemina fails to understand anything, the world is kept in complete ignorance.Least of all would

she stoop to ask a humble maidservant to translate the vernacular of the country; so she replied affably,

"Certainly, Susanna, that is the kind we always prefer. I suppose it is covered?"

Francesca did not notice, until her coachman alighted to deliver the first letter and cards, that he had one club

foot and one wooden leg; it was then that the full significance of `lamiter' came to her. He was covered,

however, as Salemina had supposed, and the occurrence gave us a precious opportunity of chaffing that

dungeon of learning. He was tolerably alert and vigorous, too, although he certainly did not impart elegance

to a vehicle, and he knew every street in the court end of Edinburgh, and every close and wynd in the Old

Town. On this our first meeting with him, he faltered only when Francesca asked him last of all to drive to

`Kildonan House, Helmsdale'; supposing, not unnaturally, that it was as well known an address as

Morningside House, Tipperlinn, whence she had just come. The lamiter had never heard of Kildonan House

nor of Helmsdale, and he had driven in the streets of Auld Reekie for thirty years. None of the drivers whom

he consulted could supply any information; Susanna Crum cudna say that she had ever heard of it, nor could

Mrs. M'Collop, nor could Miss DiggityDalgety. It was reserved for Lady Baird to explain that Helmsdale

was two hundred and eighty miles north, and that Kildonan House was ten miles from the Helmsdale railway

station, so that the poor lamiter would have had a weary drive even had he known the way. The friends who

had given us letters to Mr. and Mrs. JamesonInglis (JimmysonIngals) must have expected us either to visit

John o' Groats on the northern border, and drop in on Kildonan House en route, or to send our note of

introduction by post and await an invitation to pass the summer. At all events, the anecdote proved very

pleasing to our Edinburgh acquaintances. I hardly know whether, if they should visit America, they would

enjoy tales of their own stupidity as hugely as they did the tales of ours, but they really were very

appreciative in this particular, and it is but justice to ourselves to say that we gave them every opportunity for

But I must go back to our first grand dinner in Scotland. We were dressed at quarterpast seven, when, in

looking at the invitation again, we discovered that the dinnerhour was eight o'clock, not seventhirty.

Susanna did not happen to know the exact approximate distance to Fotheringay Crescent, but the maiden

Boots affirmed that it was only two minutes' drive, so we sat down in front of the fire to chat.

It was Lady Baird's birthday feast to which we had been bidden, and we had done our best to honour the

occasion. We had prepared a large bouquet tied with the Maclean tartan (Lady Baird is a Maclean), and had

printed in gold letters on one of the ribbons, `Another for Hector,' the battlecry of the clan. We each wore a

sprig of holly, because it is the badge of the family, while I added a girdle and shoulderknot of tartan velvet

to my pale green gown, and borrowed Francesca's emerald necklace,persuading her that she was too young

Francesca was miserably envious that she had not thought of tartans first. "You may consider yourself `geyan

fine,' all covered over with Scotch plaid, but I wouldn't be so `kenspeckle' for worlds!" she said, using

expressions borrowed from Mrs. M'Collop; "and as for disguising your nationality, do not flatter yourself that

you look like anything but an American. I forgot to tell you the conversation I overheard in the tram this

morning, between a mother and daughter, who were talking about us, I dare say. `Have they any proper

"'Still, you know they are only travelling,just passing through, as it were; they may not be familiar with our

"'Wait until you see them, mamma, and you will probably feel like hiding your diminished head! It is my

belief that if an American lady takes a halfhour journey in a tram she carries full evening dress and a

diamond necklace, in case anything should happen on the way. I am not in the least nervous about their

appearance. I only hope that they will not be too exuberant; American girls are so frightfully vivacious and

"A picturesque, though rather vigorous expression; however, it does no harm to be perfectly dressed," said

Salemina consciously, putting a steel embroidered slipper on the fender and settling the holly in the silver

folds of her gown; "then when they discover that we are all well bred, and that one of us is intelligent, it will

"Of course it is impossible to tell what country did give YOU birth," retorted Francesca, "but that will only be

Francesca is inflexibly, almost aggressively American, but Salemina is a citizen of the world. If the United

States should be involved in a war, I am confident that Salemina would be in front with the other Gatling

guns, for in that case a principle would be at stake; but in all lesser matters she is extremely unprejudiced.

She prefers German music, Italian climate, French dressmakers, English tailors, Japanese manners, and

AmericanAmerican somethingI have forgotten just what; it is either the icecream soda or the form of

"I wonder why they named it `Fotheringay' Crescent," mused Francesca. "Some association with Mary Stuart,

of course. Poor, poor, pretty lady! A free queen only six years, and think of the number of beds she slept in,

and the number of trees she planted; we have already seen, I am afraid to say how many. When did she

govern, when did she scheme, above all when did she flirt, with all this racing and chasing over the country?

Mrs. M'Collop calls Anne of Denmark a `sad scattercash' and Mary an `awfu' gadabout,' and I am inclined to

agree with her. By the way, when she was making my bed this morning, she told me that her mother claimed

descent from the Stewarts of Appin, whoever they may be. She apologised for Queen Mary's defects as if she

were a distant family connection. If so, then the famous Stuart charm has been lost somewhere, for Mrs

"I am going to select some distinguished ancestors this very minute, before I go to my first Edinburgh

dinner," said I decidedly. "It seems hard that ancestors should have everything to do with settling our

nationality and our position in life, and we not have a word to say. How nice it would be to select one's own

after one had arrived at years of discretion, or to adopt different ones according to the country one chanced to

be visiting! I am going to do it; it is unusual, but there must be a pioneer in every good movement. Let me

think: do help me, Salemina! I am a Hamilton to begin with; I might be descended from the logical Sir

"He died only about thirty years ago, and you would have to be his daughter: that would never do," said

Salemina. "Why don't you take Thomas Hamilton, Earl of Melrose and Haddington? He was Secretary of

State, King's Advocate, Lord President of the Court of Session, and all sorts of fine things. He was the one

"Perfectly delightful! I don't care so much about his other titles, but `Tam o' the Cowgate' is irresistible. I will

"He was at least your greatgreatgreatgreatgrandfather; that is a safe distance. Then there's that famous

Jenny Geddes, who flung her fauldstule at the Dean in St. Giles',she was a Hamilton too, if you fancy

"Yes, I'll take her with pleasure," I responded thankfully. "Of course I don't know why she flung the

stool,it may have been very reprehensible; but there is always good stuff in stoolflingers; it's the sort of

"I haven't even a peg on which to hang a Scottish ancestor," said Salemina disconsolately.

"Oh, nonsense! think harder. Anybody will do as a startingpoint; only you must be honourable and really

You can play that you are one of the famous `licht Lindsays,' and you can look up the particular ancestor in

"I am American to the backbone," she declared, with insufferable dignity. "I do not desire any foreign

"Francesca!" I expostulated. "Do you mean to tell me that you can dine with a lineal descendant of Sir Fitzroy

Donald Maclean, Baronet, of Duart and Morven, and not make any effort to trace your genealogy back

"If you goad me to desperation," she answered, "I will wear an American flag in my hair, declare that my

father is a Red Indian, or a porkpacker, and talk about the superiority of our checking system and hotels all

the evening. I don't want to go, any way. It is sure to be stiff and ceremonious, and the man who takes me in

will ask me the population of Chicago and the amount of wheat we exported last year,he always does."

"My looks have thus far proved no protection," she replied sadly. "Salemina is so flexible, and you are so

dramatic, that you enter into all these experiences with zest. You already more than half believe in that Tam

o' the Cowgate story. But there'll be nothing for me in Edinburgh society; it will be all clergymen"

"all ministers and professors. My Redfern gowns will be unappreciated, and my Worth evening frocks

"There are a few thousand medical students," I said encouragingly, "and all the young advocates, and a

"And," continued Salemina bitingly, "there will always be, even in an intellectual city like Edinburgh, a few

men who continue to escape all the developing influences about them, and remain commonplace,

conventional manikins, devoted to dancing and flirting. Never fear, they will find you!"

This sounds harsh, but nobody minds Salemina, least of all Francesca, who well knows that she is the apple

of that spinster's eye. But at this moment Susanna opens the door (timorously, as if there might be a panther

behind it) and announces the cab (in the same tone in which she would announce the beast); we pick up our

draperies, and are whirled off by the lamiter to dine with the Scottish nobility.

It was the Princess Dashkoff who said, in the latter part of the eighteenth century, that of all the societies of

men of talent she had met with in her travels, Edinburgh's was the first in point of abilities.

One might make the same remark today, perhaps, and not depart widely from the truth. One does not find,

however, as many noted names as are associated with the annals of the Cape and Poker Clubs or the

Crochallan Fencibles, those famous groups of famous men who met for relaxation (and intoxication, I should

think) at the old Isle of Man Arms or in Dawney's Tavern in the Anchor Close. These groups included such

shining lights as Robert Fergusson the poet, and Adam Ferguson the historian and philosopher, Gavin

Wilson, Sir Henry Raeburn, David Hume, Erskine, Lords Newton, Gillies, Monboddo, Hailes, Kames, Henry

Mackenzie, and the Ploughman Poet himself, who has kept alive the memory of the Crochallans in many a

jovial verse like that in which he describes Smellie, the eccentric philosopher and printer:

or in the characteristic picture of William Dunbar, a wit of the time, and the merriest of the Fencibles:

or in the verses on Creech, Burns's publisher, who left Edinburgh for a time in 1789. The `Willies,' by the

I think perhaps the gatherings of the present time are neither quite as gay nor quite as brilliant as those of

As they sit in their chairs nowadays to the very end of the feast, there is doubtless joined with modern

To an American the great charm of Edinburgh is its leisurely atmosphere: `not the leisure of a village arising

from the deficiency of ideas and motives, but the leisure of a city reposing grandly on tradition and history;

which has done its work, and does not require to weave its own clothing, to dig its own coals, or smelt its

We were reminded of this more than once, and it never failed to depress us properly. If one had ever lived in

Pittsburg, Fall River, or Kansas City, I should think it would be almost impossible to maintain selfrespect in

a place like Edinburgh, where the citizens `are released from the vulgarising dominion of the hour.' Whenever

one of Auld Reekie's great men took this tone with me, I always felt as though I were the germ in a

halfhatched egg, and he were an aged and lordly cock gazing at me pityingly through my shell. He, lucky

creature, had lived through all the struggles which I was to undergo; he, indeed, was released from `the

vulgarising dominion of the hour'; but I, poor thing, must grow and grow, and keep pecking at my shell, in

Sydney Smith says in one of his letters, `Never shall I forget the happy days passed there [in Edinburgh],

amidst odious smells, barbarous sounds, bad suppers, excellent hearts, and the most enlightened and

cultivated understandings.' His only criticism of the conversation of that day (17971802) concerned itself

with the prevalence of that form of Scotch humour which was called wut; and with the disputations and

dialectics. We were more fortunate than Sydney Smith, because Edinburgh has outgrown its odious smells,

barbarous sounds, and bad suppers and, wonderful to relate, has kept its excellent hearts and its enlightened

and cultivated understandings. As for mingled wut and dialectics, where can one find a better foundation for

The hospitable board itself presents no striking differences from our own, save the customs of serving sweets

in soupplates with dessertspoons, of a smaller number of forks on parade, of the invariable fishknife at

each plate, of the prevalent `savoury' and `cold shape,' and the unusual grace and skill with which the hostess

carves. Even at very large dinners one occasionally sees a lady of high degree severing the joints of chickens

and birds most daintily, while her lord looks on in happy idleness, thinking, perhaps, how greatly times have

changed for the better since the ages of strife and bloodshed, when Scottish nobles

The Scotch butler is not in the least like an English one. No man could be as respectable as he looks, not even

an elder of the kirk, whom he resembles closely. He hands your plate as if it were a contributionbox, and in

his moments of ease, when he stands behind the `maister,' I am always expecting him to pronounce a

benediction. The English butler, when he wishes to avoid the appearance of listening to the conversation,

gazes with level eye into vacancy; the Scotch butler looks distinctly heavenward, as if he were brooding on

the principle of coordinate jurisdiction with mutual subordination. It would be impossible for me to deny the

key of the winecellar to a being so steeped in sanctity, but it has been done, I am told, in certain rare and

As for toilets, the men dress like all other men (alas, and alas, that we should say it, for we were continually

hoping for a kilt!) though there seems to be no survival of the finical Lord Napier's spirit. Perhaps you

remember that Lord and Lady Napier arrived at Castlemilk in Lanarkshire with the intention of staying a

week, but announced next morning that a circumstance had occurred which rendered it indispensable to

return without delay to their seat in Selkirkshire. This was the only explanation given, but it was afterwards

discovered that Lord Napier's valet had committed the grievous mistake of packing up a set of neckcloths

The ladies of the `smart set' in Edinburgh wear French fripperies and chiffons, as do their sisters every where,

but the other women of society dress a trifle more staidly than their cousins in London, Paris, or New York.

The sobriety of taste and severity of style that characterise Scotswomen may be due, like Susanna Crum's

dubieties, to the haar, to the shorter catechism, or perhaps in some degree to the presence of three branches of

the Presbyterian Church among them; the society that bears in its bosom three separate and antagonistic kinds

In Lord Cockburn's time the `dames of high and aristocratic breed' must have been sufficiently awake to

feminine frivolities to be both gorgeously and extravagantly arrayed. I do not know in all literature a more

delicious and lifelike wordportrait than Lord Cockburn gives of Mrs. Rochead, the Lady of Inverleith, in the

Memorials. It is quite worthy to hang beside a Raeburn canvas; one can scarce say more.

`Except Mrs. Siddons in some of her displays of magnificent royalty, nobody could sit down like the Lady of

Inverleith. She would sail like a ship from Tarshish, gorgeous in velvet or rustling silk, done up in all the

accompaniments of fans, earrings, and fingerrings, falling sleeves, scentbottle, embroidered bag, hoop,

and train; managing all this seemingly heavy rigging with as much ease as a fullblown swan does its

plumage. She would take possession of the centre of a large sofa, and at the same moment, without the

slightest visible exertion, cover the whole of it with her bravery, the graceful folds seeming to lay themselves

over it, like summer waves. The descent from her carriage, too, where she sat like a nautilus in its shell, was a

display which no one in these days could accomplish or even fancy. The mulberrycoloured coach,

apparently not too large for what it contained, though she alone was in it; the handsome, jolly coachman and

his splendid hammercloth loaded with lace; the two respectful liveried footmen, one on each side of the

richly carpeted step,these were lost sight of amidst the slow majesty with which the Lady of Inverleith

My righthand neighbour at Lady Baird's dinner was surprised at my quoting Lord Cockburn. One's

attendant squires here always seem surprised when one knows anything; but they are always delighted, too,

so that the amazement is less trying. True, I had read the Memorials only the week before, and had never

heard of them previous to that time; but that detail, according to my theories, makes no real difference. The

woman who knows how and when to `read up,' who reads because she wants to be in sympathy with a new

environment; the woman who has wit and perspective enough to be stimulated by novel conditions and

kindled by fresh influences, who is susceptible to the vibrations of other people's history, is safe to be fairly

intelligent and extremely agreeable, if only she is sufficiently modest. I think my neighbour found me

thoroughly delightful after he discovered my point of view. He was an earl; and it always takes an earl a

certain length of time to understand me. I scarcely know why, for I certainly should not think it courteous to

interpose any real barriers between the nobility and that portion of the `masses' represented in my humble

It seemed to me at first that the earl did not apply himself to the study of my national peculiarities with much

assiduity, but wasted considerable time in gazing at Francesca, who was opposite. She is certainly very

handsome, and I never saw her lovelier than at that dinner; her eyes were like stars, and her cheeks and lips a

splendid crimson, for she was quarrelling with her attendant cavalier about the relative merits of Scotland and

When the earl had sufficiently piqued me by his devotion to his dinner and his glances at Francesca, I began a

systematic attempt to achieve his (transient) subjugation. Of course I am ardently attached to Willie

Beresford and prefer him to any earl in Britain, but one's selfrespect demands something in the way of food.

I could see Salemina at the far end of the table radiant with success, the W.S. at her side bending ever and

anon to catch the (artificial) pearls of thought that dropped from her lips. "Miss Hamilton appears simple" (I

thought I heard her say); "but in reality she is as deep as the Currie Brig!" Now where did she get that

allusion? And again, when the W.S. asked her whither she was going when she left Edinburgh, "I hardly

know," she replied pensively. "I am waiting for the shade of Montrose to direct me, as the Viscount Dundee

said to your Duke of Gordon." The entranced Scotsman little knew that she had perfected this style of

conversation by long experience with the Q.C.'s of England. Talk about my being as deep as the Currie Brig

(whatever it may be); Salemina is deeper than the Atlantic Ocean! I shall take pains to inform her Writer to

the Signet, after dinner, that she eats sugar on her porridge every morning; that will show him her nationality

The earl took the greatest interest in my new ancestors, and approved thoroughly of my choice. He thinks I

must have been named for Lady Penelope Belhaven, who lived in Leven Lodge, one of the country villas of

the Earls of Leven, from whom he himself is descended. "Does that make us relatives?" I asked. "Relatives,

most assuredly," he replied, "but not too near to destroy the charm of friendship."

He thought it a great deal nicer to select one's own forebears than to allow them all the responsibility, and

said it would save a world of trouble if the method could be universally adopted. He added that he should be

glad to part with a good many of his, but doubted whether I would accept them, as they were `rather a scratch

lot.' (I use his own language, which I thought delightfully easy for a belted earl.) He was charmed with the

story of Francesca and the lamiter, and offered to drive me to Kildonan House, Helmsdale, on the first fine

day. I told him he was quite safe in making the proposition, for we had already had the fine day, and we

The gentleman on my left, a distinguished Dean of the Thistle, gave me a few moments' discomfort by telling

me that the old custom of `rounds' of toasts still prevailed at Lady Baird's on formal occasions, and that

before the ladies retired every one would be called upon for appropriate `sentiments.'

"Oh, epigrammatic sentences expressive of moral feelings or virtues," replied my neighbour easily. "They are

not quite as formal and hackneyed now as they were in the olden time, when some of the favourite toasts

were `May the pleasure of the evening bear the reflections of the morning!' `May the friends of our youth be

the companions of our old age!' `May the honest heart never feel distress!' `May the hand of charity wipe the

"I can never do it in the world!" I ejaculated. "Oh, one ought never, never to leave one's own country! A

lightminded and cynical English gentleman told me that I should frequently be called upon to read hymns

and recite verses of Scripture at family dinners in Edinburgh, and I hope I am always prepared to do that; but

nobody warned me that I should have to evolve epigrammatic sentiments on the spur of the moment."

My confusion was so evident that the good dean relented and confessed that he was imposing upon my

ignorance. He made me laugh heartily at the story of a poor dominie at Arndilly. He was called upon in his

turn, at a large party, and having nothing to aid him in an exercise to which he was new save the example of

his predecessors, lifted his glass after much writhing and groaning and gave, "The reflection of the moon in

At this moment Lady Baird glanced at me, and we all rose to go into the drawingroom; but on the way from

my chair to the door, whither the earl escorted me, he said gallantly, "I suppose the men in your country do

not take champagne at dinner? I cannot fancy their craving it when dining beside an American woman!"

That was charming, though he did pay my country a compliment at my expense. One likes, of course, to have

the type recognised as fine; at the same time his remark would have been more flattering if it had been less

When I remember that he offered me his ancestors, asked me to drive two hundred and eighty miles, and

likened me to champagne, I feel that, with my heart already occupied and my hand promised, I could hardly

Francesca's experiences were not so fortunate; indeed, I have never seen her more out of sorts than she was

"How did you get on with your delightful minister?" inquired Salemina of the young lady, as she flung her

unoffending wrap over the back of a chair. "He was quite the handsomest man in the room; who is he?"

"He is the Reverend Ronald Macdonald, and the most disagreeable, condescending, illtempered prig I ever

"Why, Francesca!" I exclaimed. "Lady Baird speaks of him as her favourite nephew, and says he is full of

"He is just as full of charm as he was when I met him," returned the girl nonchalantly; "that is, he parted with

none of it this evening. He was incorrigibly stiff and rude, and oh! so Scotch! I believe if one punctured him

"Doubtless you acquainted him, early in the evening, with the immeasurable advantages of our sleepingcar

system, the superiority of our fastrunning elevators, and the height of our buildings?" observed Salemina.

"Oh, I alluded to it; but only when he said that our hot summers must be insufferable."

"I suppose you repeated the remark you made at luncheon, that the ladies you had seen in Princes Street were

"Yes, I did!" she replied hotly; "but that was because he said that American girls generally looked bloodless

and frail. He asked if it were really true that they ate chalk and slate pencils. Wasn't that unendurable? I

answered that those were the chief solid article of food, but that after their complexions were established, so

to speak, their parents often allowed them pickles and native claret to vary the diet."

"Oh, he said, `Quite so, quite so'; that was his invariable response to all my witticisms. Then when I told him

casually that the shops looked very small and dark and stuffy here, and that there were not as many tartans

and plaids in the windows as we had expected, he remarked that as to the latter point, the American season

had not opened yet! Presently he asserted that no royal city in Europe could boast ten centuries of such

glorious and stirring history as Edinburgh. I said it did not appear to be stirring much at present, and that

everything in Scotland seemed a little slow to an American; that he could have no idea of push or enterprise

until he visited a city like Chicago. He retorted that, happily, Edinburgh was peculiarly free from the taint of

the ledger and the countinghouse; that it was Weimar without a Goethe, Boston without its twang!"

"Incredible!" cried Salemina, deeply wounded in her local pride. "He never could have said `twang' unless

"I dare say I did; he is easily tried," returned Francesca. "I asked him, sarcastically, if he had ever been in

Boston. `No,' he said, `it is not necessary to GO there! And while we are discussing these matters,' he went

on, `how is your American dyspepsia these days,have you decided what is the cause of it?'

"'Yes, we have,' said I, as quick as a flash; `we have always taken in more foreigners than we could

assimilate!' I wanted to tell him that one Scotsman of his type would upset the national digestion anywhere,

"I am glad you did restrain yourselfonce," exclaimed Salemina. "What a tactful person the Reverend

Ronald must be, if you have reported him faithfully! Why didn't you give him up, and turn to your other

"I did, as soon as I could with courtesy; but the man on my left was the type that always haunts me at dinners;

if the hostess hasn't one on her visitinglist she imports one for the occasion. He asked me at once of what

material the Brooklyn Bridge is made. I told him I really didn't know. Why should I? I seldom go over it.

Then he asked me whether it was a suspension bridge or a cantilever. Of course I didn't know; I am not an

"You are so tactlessly, needlessly candid," I expostulated. "Why didn't you say boldly that the Brooklyn

Bridge is a wooden cantilever, with guttapercha braces? He didn't know, or he wouldn't have asked you. He

couldn't find out until he reached home, and you would never have seen him again; and if you had, and he

had taunted you, you could have laughed vivaciously and said you were chaffing. That is my method, and it

is the only way to preserve life in a foreign country. Even my earl, who did not thirst for information

(fortunately), asked me the population of the Yellowstone Park, and I simply told him three hundred

"That would never have satisfied my neighbour," said Francesca. "Finding me in such a lamentable state of

ignorance, he explained the principle of his own stupid Forth Bridge to me. When I said I understood

perfectly, just to get into shallower water, where we wouldn't need any bridge, the Reverend Ronald joined in

the conversation, and asked me to repeat the explanation to him. Naturally I couldn't, and he knew that I

couldn't when he asked me, so the bridge man (I don't know his name, and don't care to know it) drew a

diagram of the national idol on his dinnercard and gave a dull and elaborate lecture upon it. Here is the card,

and now that three hours have intervened I cannot tell which way to turn the drawing so as to make the bridge

right side up; if there is anything puzzling in the world, it is these architectural plans and diagrams. I am

"He asked if he might come and continue our `stimulating' conversation, and as Lady Baird was standing by I

could hardly say no. I am sure of one thing: that before I finish with him I will widen his horizon so that he

will be able to see something beside Scotland and his little insignificant Fifeshire parish! I told him our

country parishes in America were ten times as large as his. He said he had heard that they covered a good

deal of territory, and that the ministers' salaries were sometimes paid in pork and potatoes. That shows you

"I really cannot decide which of you was the more disagreeable," said Salemina; "if he calls, I shall not

"I wouldn't gratify him by staying out," retorted Francesca. "He is extremely good for the circulation; I think I

was never so warm in my life as when I talked with him; as physical exercise he is equal to bicycling. The

bridge man is coming to call, too. I made him a diagram of Breadalbane Terrace, and a plan of the hall and

staircase, on my dinnercard. He was distinctly ungrateful; in fact, he remarked that he had been born in this

very house, but would not trust himself to find his way upstairs with my plan as a guide. He also said the

"Francesca is very like that young man," laughed Salemina, "who, whenever he engaged in controversy,

"I'm not supersensitive," replied Francesca, "but when one's vocabulary is called picturesque by a Britisher,

one always knows he is thinking of cowboys and broncos. However, I shifted the weight into the other scale

by answering `Thank you. And your phraseology is just as unusual to us.' `Indeed?' he said with some

surprise. `I supposed our method of expression very sedate and uneventful.' `Not at all,' I returned, `when you

say, as you did a moment ago, that you never eat potato to your fish.' `But I do not,' he urged obtusely. `Very

likely,' I argued, `but the fact is not of so much importance as the preposition. Now I eat potato WITH my

fish.' `You make a mistake,' he said, and we both laughed in spite of ourselves, while he murmured, `eating

potato WITH fishhow extraordinary.' Well, the bridge man may not add perceptibly to the gaiety of the

nations, but he is better than the Reverend Ronald. I forgot to say that when I chanced to be speaking of

doughnuts, that `unconquer'd Scot' asked me if a doughnut resembled a peanut? Can you conceive such

"I think you were not only aggressively American, but painfully provincial," said Salemina, with some

warmth. "Why in the world should you drag doughnuts into a dinnertable conversation in Edinburgh? Why

"To one who has ever eaten a doughnut, the subject is of transcendent interest; and as for one who has

notwell, he should be made to feel his limitations," replied Francesca, with a yawn. "Come, let us forget

About half an hour later she came to my bedside, her dark hair hanging over her white gown, her eyes still

"Penelope," she said softly, "I did not dare tell Salemina, and I should not confess it to you save that I am

afraid Lady Baird will complain of me; but I was dreadfully rude to the Reverend Ronald! I couldn't help it;

he roused my worst passions. It all began with his saying he thought international marriages presented even

more difficulties to the imagination than the other kind. I hadn't said anything about marriages nor thought

anything about marriages of any sort, but I told him INSTANTLY I considered that every international

marriage involved two national suicides. He said that he shouldn't have put it quite so forcibly, but that he

hadn't given much thought to the subject. I said that I had, and I thought we had gone on long enough filling

"FRANCES!" I interrupted. "Don't tell me that you made that vulgar, cheap newspaper assertion!"

"I did," she replied stoutly, "and at the moment I only wished I could make it stronger. If there had been

anything cheaper or more vulgar, I should have said it, but of course there isn't. Then he remarked that the

British nobility merited and needed all the support it could get in these hard times, and asked if we had not

cherished some intention in the States, lately, of bestowing it in greenbacks instead of gold! I threw all

manners to the winds after that and told him that there were no husbands in the world like American men, and

that foreigners never seemed to have any proper consideration for women. Now, were my remarks any worse

"You should go to bed first," I murmured sleepily; "and if you ever have an opportunity to make amends,

which I doubt, you should devote yourself to showing the Reverend Ronald the breadth of your own horizon

instead of trying so hard to broaden his. As you are extremely pretty, you may possibly succeed; man is

human, and I dare say in a month you will be advising him to love somebody more worthy than yourself. (He

could easily do it!) Now don't kiss me again, for I am displeased with you; I hate international bickering!"

"So do I," agreed Francesca virtuously, as she plaited her hair, "and there is no spectacle so abhorrent to

every sense as a narrow minded man who cannot see anything outside of his own country. But he is awfully

goodlooking,I will say that for him: and if you don't explain me to Lady Baird, I will write to Mr.

Beresford about the earl. There was no bickering there; it was looking at you two that made us think of

"It must have suggested to you that speech about filling the coffers of the British nobility," I replied

sarcastically, "inasmuch as the earl has twenty thousand pounds a year, probably, and I could barely buy two

"Good night again, then," she said, as she rose reluctantly from the foot of the bed. "I doubt if I can sleep for

thinking what a pity it is that such an egotistic, bumptious, pugnacious, prejudiced, insular, bigoted person

should be so handsome! And who wants to marry him any way, that he should be so distressed about

international alliances? One would think that all female America was sighing to lead him to the altar!"

Two or three days ago we noted an unusual though subdued air of excitement at 22 Breadalbane Terrace,

where for a week we had been the sole lodgers. Mrs. Menzies, whom we call Mingess, has returned to

Kilconquhar, which she calls Kinyuchar; Miss CockburnSinclair has purchased her wedding outfit and gone

back to Inverness, where she will be greeted as CoburnSinkler; the HepburnSciennes will be leaving

tomorrow, just as we have learned to pronounce their names; and the sound of the scrubbingbrush 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 stairrods.

Whenever we traverse the halls we are obliged to leap over pails of suds, and Miss DiggityDalgety has

given us two dinners which bore a curious resemblance to washingday repasts in suburban America.

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 diningroom floor, and paraphrases and hymns float down the stairs from

above. Their Graces the Lord High Commissioner and the Marchioness of Heatherdale will arrive today at

Holyrood Palace, there to reside during the sittings of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, and

tomorrow 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 honour 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, macebearers, ushers, and pages,

together with the Pursebearer, and the Lyon KingofArms, and the national anthem, and the royal salute;

`Should the weather be wet, the troops will be cloaked at the discretion of the commanding officer.' They

print this instruction as a matter of form, and of course every man has his macintosh 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

whom the Scottish climate will occasionally relax is Her Majesty Queen Victoria, who for sixty years has

exerted a benign influence on British skies and at least secured sunshine on great parade days. Such women

In this wise enters His Grace the Lord High Commissioner to open the General Assembly of the Church of

Scotland; and on the same day there arrives by the railway (but travelling first class) the Moderator of the

Church of Scotland Free, to convene its separate supreme Courts in Edinburgh. He will have no Union Jacks,

Royal Standards, Dragoons, bands, or pipers; he will bear his own purse and stay at an hotel; but when the

final procession of all comes, he will probably march beside His Grace the Lord High Commissioner, and

they will talk together, not of deadandgone kingdoms, but of the one at hand, where there are no more

divisions in the ranks, and where all the soldiers are simply `king's men,' marching to victory under the

It is a matter of regret to us that the U.P.'s, the third branch of Scottish Presbyterianism, could not be holding

an Assembly during this same week, so that we might the more easily decide in which flock we really belong.

22 Breadalbane Terrace now represents all shades of religious opinion within the bounds of Presbyterianism.

We have an Elder, a Professor of Biblical Criticism, a Majesty's Chaplain, and even an exModerator under

our roof, and they are equally divided between the Free and the Established bodies.

Mrs. M'Collop herself is a pillar of the Free Kirk, but she has no prejudice in lodgers, and says so long as she

`mak's her rent she doesna care aboot their releegious principles.' Miss Diggity Dalgety is the sole

representative of United Presbyterianism in the household, and she is somewhat gloomy in Assembly time.

To belong to a dissenting body, and yet to cook early and late for the purpose of fattening one's religious

rivals, is doubtless trying to the temper; and then she asserts that `meenisters are aye tume [empty].'

"You must put away your Scottish ballads and histories now, Salemina, and keep your Concordance and your

This I said as we stood on George IV. Bridge and saw the ministers glooming down from the Mound in a

dense Assembly fog. As the presence of any considerable number of priests on an ocean steamer is supposed

to bring rough weather, so the addition of a few hundred parsons to the population of Edinburgh is believed

Of course, when one is in perfect bodily health one can more readily resist the infection of disease. Similarly

if Scottish skies were not ready and longing to pour out rain, were not ignobly weak in holding it back, they

would not be so susceptible to the depressing influences of visiting ministers. This is Francesca's theory as

stated to the Reverend Ronald, who was holding an umbrella over her ungrateful head at the time; and she

went on to boast of a convention she once attended in California, where twentysix thousand Christian

Endeavourers were unable to dim the American sunshine, though they stayed ten days.

"Our first duty, both to ourselves and to the community," I continued to Salemina, "is to learn how there can

be three distinct kinds of proper Presbyterianism. Perhaps it would be a graceful act on our part if we should

each espouse a different kind; then there would be no feeling among our Edinburgh friends. And again what

is this `union' of which we hear murmurs? Is it religious or political? Is it an echo of the 1707 Union you

explained to us last week, or is it a new one? What is Disestablishment? What is Disruption? Are they the

same thing? What is the Sustentation Fund? What was the NonIntrusion party? What was the Dundas

Despotism? What is the argument at present going on about taking the Shorter Catechism out of the schools?

What is the Shorter Catechism, any way,or at least what have they left out of the Longer Catechism to

make it shorter,and is the length of the Catechism one of the points of difference? then when we have

looked up Chalmers and Candlish, we can ask the exModerator and the Professor of Biblical Criticism to

Salemina and Francesca both incline to the Established church, I lean instinctively toward the Free; but that

does not mean that we have any knowledge of the differences that separate them. Salemina is a conservative

in all things; she loves law, order, historic associations, old customs; and so when there is a regularly

established national church,or, for that matter, a regularly established anything, she gravitates to it by the

law of her being. Francesca's religious convictions, when she is away from her own minister and native land,

are inclined to be flexible. The church that enters Edinburgh with a marquis and a marchioness representing

the Crown, the church that opens its Assembly with splendid processions and dignified pageants, the church

that dispenses generous hospitality from Holyrood Palace,above all, the church that escorts its Lord High

Commissioner from place to place with bands and pipers,that is the church to which she pledges her

As for me, I believe I am a born protestant, or `comeouter,' as they used to call dissenters in the early days

of New England. I have not yet had time to study the question, but as I lack all knowledge of the other two

branches of Presbyterianism, I am enabled to say unhesitatingly that I belong to the Free Kirk. To begin with,

the very word `free' has a fascination for the citizen of a republic; and then my theological training was begun

this morning by a gifted young minister of Edinburgh whom we call the Friar, because the first time we saw

him in his gown and bands (the little spot of sheer whiteness beneath the chin, that lends such added

spirituality to a spiritual face) we fancied that he looked like some pale brother of the Church in the olden

time. His pallor, in a land of rosy redness and milky whiteness; his smooth, fair hair, which in the light from

the stainedglass window above the pulpit looked reddish gold; the Southern heat of passionate conviction

that coloured his slow Northern speech; the remoteness of his personality; the weariness of his deepset eyes,

that bespoke such fastings and vigils as he probably never practised,all this led to our choice of the name.

As we walked toward St. Andrew's Church and Tanfield Hall, where he insisted on taking me to get the

`proper historical background,' he told me about the great Disruption movement. He was extremely

eloquent,so eloquent that the image of Willie Beresford tottered continually on its throne, and I found not

the slightest difficulty in giving an unswerving allegiance to the principles presented by such an orator.

We went first to St. Andrew's, where the General Assembly met in 1843, and where the famous exodus of the

Free Protesting Church took place,one of the most important events in the modern history of the United

The movement was promoted by the great Dr. Chalmers and his party, mainly to abolish the patronage of

livings, then in the hands of certain heritors or patrons, who might appoint any minister they wished, without

consulting the congregation. Needless to say, as a freeborn American citizen, and never having had a heritor

in the family, my blood easily boiled at the recital of such tyranny. In 1834 the Church had passed a law of its

own, it seems, ordaining that no presentee to a parish should be admitted, if opposed by the majority of the

male communicants. That would have been well enough could the State have been made to agree, though I

should have gone further, personally, and allowed the female communicants to have some voice in the matter.

The Friar took me into a particularly chilly historic corner, and, leaning against a damp stone pillar, painted

the scene in St. Andrew's when the Assembly met in the presence of a great body of spectators, while a vast

throng gathered without, breathlessly awaiting the result. No one believed that any large number of ministers

would relinquish livings and stipends and cast their bread upon the waters for what many thought a `fantastic

principle.' Yet when the Moderator left his place, after reading a formal protest signed by one hundred and

twenty ministers and seventytwo elders, he was followed first by Dr. Chalmers, and then by four hundred

and seventy men, who marched in a body to Tanfield Hall, where they formed themselves into the General

Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland. When Lord Jeffrey was told of it an hour later, he exclaimed,

`Thank God for Scotland! there is not another country on earth where such a deed could be done!' And the

Friar reminded me proudly of Macaulay's saying that the Scots had made sacrifices for the sake of religious

opinion for which there was no parallel in the annals of England. On the next Sunday after these remarkable

scenes in Edinburgh there were heartbreaking farewells, so the Friar said, in many village parishes, when

the minister, in dismissing his congregation, told them that he had ceased to belong to the Established Church

and would neither preach nor pray in that pulpit again; that he had joined the Free Protesting Church of

Scotland, and, God willing, would speak the next Sabbath morning at the manse door to as many as cared to

follow him. "What affecting leave takings there must have been!" the Friar exclaimed. "When my

grandfather left his church that May morning, only fifteen members remained behind, and he could hear the

more courageous say to the timid ones, `Tak' your Bible and come awa', mon!' Was not all this a splendid

testimony to the power of principle and the sacred demands of conscience?" I said "Yea" most heartily, for

the spirit of Jenny Geddes stirred within me that morning, and under the spell of the Friar's kindling eye and

eloquent voice I positively gloried in the valiant achievements of the Free Church. It would always be easier

for a woman to say, "Yea" than "Nay" to the Friar. When he left me in Breadalbane Terrace I was at heart a

member of his congregation in good (and irregular) standing, ready to teach in his Sundayschool, sing in his

choir, visit his aged and sick poor, and especially to stand between him and a too admiring feminine

When I entered the drawingroom, I found that Salemina had just enjoyed an hour's conversation with the

"Oh, my dear," she sighed, "you have missed such a treat! You have no conception of these Scottish ministers

of the Establishment, such culture, such courtliness of manner, such scholarship, such spirituality, such

wise benignity of opinion! I asked the doctor to explain the Disruption movement to me, and he was most

interesting and lucid, and most affecting, too, when he described the misunderstandings and misconceptions

that the Church suffered in those terrible days of 1843, when its very lifeblood, as well as its integrity and

unity, were threatened by the foes in its own household; when breaches of faith and trust occurred on all

sides, and dissents and disloyalties shook it to its very foundation! You see, Penelope, I have never fully

understood the disagreements about heritors and livings and state control before, but here is the whole matter

"My dear Salemina," I interposed, with dignity, "you will pardon me, I am sure, when I tell you that any

discussion on this point would be intensely painful to me, as I now belong to the Free Kirk."

"I see! Happy the missionary to whom you incline your ear, FIRST!" which I thought rather inconsistent

of Salemina, as she had been converted by precisely the same methods and in precisely the same length of

time as had I, the only difference being in the ages of our respective missionaries, one being about

fiveandthirty, and other fiveandsixty. Even this is to my credit after all, for if one can be persuaded so

quickly and fully by a young and comparatively inexperienced man, it shows that one must be extremely

Religion in Edinburgh is a theory, a convention, a fashion (both humble and aristocratic), a sensation, an

intellectual conviction, an emotion, a dissipation, a sweet habit of the blood; in fact, it is, it seems to me,

When we had finished our church toilettes, and came into the drawingroom, on the first Sunday morning, I

"There is a battle, murder, or sudden death going on in the square below," she said. "I am going to ask

Susanna to ask Mrs. M'Collop what it means. Never have I seen such a crowd moving peacefully, with no

excitement or confusion, in one direction. Where can the people be going? Do you suppose it is a fire? Why, I

believe . . . it cannot be possible . . . yes, they certainly are disappearing in that big church on the corner; and

millions, simply millions and trillions, are coming in the other direction,toward St. Knox's."

Impressive as was this morning churchgoing, a still greater surprise awaited us at seven o'clock in the

evening, when the crowd blocked the streets on two sides of a church near Breadalbane Terrace; and though

it was quite ten minutes before service when we entered, Salemina and I only secured the last two seats in the

aisle, and Francesca was obliged to sit on the steps of the pulpit or seek a sermon elsewhere.

It amused me greatly to see Francesca sitting on pulpit steps, her Paris gown and smart toque in close

juxtaposition to the rusty bonnet and bombazine dress of a respectable elderly tradeswoman. The church

officer entered first, bearing the great Bible and hymn book, which he reverently placed on the pulpit

cushions; and close behind him, to our entire astonishment, came the Reverend Ronald Macdonald, evidently

exchanging with the regular minister of the parish, whom we had come especially to hear. I pitied Francesca's

confusion and embarrassment, but I was too far from her to offer an exchange of seats, and through the long

service she sat there at the feet of her foe, so near that she could have touched the hem of his gown as he knelt

Perhaps she was thinking of her last interview with him, when she descanted at length on that superfluity of

naughtiness and Biblical pedantry which, she asserted, made Scottish ministers preach from outoftheway

"I have never been able to find my place in the Bible since I arrived," she complained to Salemina, when she

was quite sure that Mr. Macdonald was listening to her; and this he generally was, in my opinion, no matter

who chanced to be talking. "What with their skipping and hopping about from Haggai to Philemon,

Habakkuk to Jude, and Micah to Titus, in their readings, and then settling on seventh Nahum, sixth

Zephaniah, or second Calathumpians for the sermon, I do nothing but search the Scriptures in the Edinburgh

churches,search, search, search, until some Christian by my side or in the pew behind me notices my

hapless plight, and hands me a Bible opened at the text. Last Sunday it was Obadiah first, fifteenth, `For the

day of the Lord is near upon all the heathen.' It chanced to be a returned missionary who was preaching on

that occasion; but the Bible is full of heathen, and why need he have chosen a text from Obadiah, poor little

Obadiah one page long, slipped in between Amos and Jonah, where nobody but an elder could find him?" If

Francesca had not seen with wicked delight the Reverend Ronald's expression of anxiety, she would never

have spoken of second Calathumpians; but of course he has no means of knowing how unlike herself she is

To go back to our first Sunday worship in Edinburgh. The church officer closed the door of the pulpit on the

Reverend Ronald, and I thought I heard the clicking of a lock; at all events, he returned at the close of the

services to liberate him and escort him back to the vestry; for the entrances and exits of this beadle, or

`minister's man,' as the church officer is called in the country districts, form an impressive part of the

ceremonies. If he did lock the minister into the pulpit, it is probably only another national custom, like the

occasional locking in of the passengers in a railway train, and may be positively necessary in the case of such

I have never seen such attention, such concentration, as in these great congregations of the Edinburgh

churches. As nearly as I can judge, it is intellectual rather than emotional; but it is not a tribute paid to

eloquence alone, it is habitual and universal, and is yielded loyally to insufferable dulness when occasion

When the text is announced, there is an indescribable rhythmic movement forward, followed by a concerted

rustle of Bible leaves; not the rustle of a few Bibles in a few pious pews, but the rustle of all of them in all the

pews,and there are more Bibles in an Edinburgh Presbyterian church than one ever sees anywhere else,

The text is read twice clearly, and another rhythmic movement follows when the books are replaced on the

shelves. Then there is a delightful settling back of the entire congregation, a snuggling comfortably into

corners and a fitting of shoulders to the pews. not to sleep, however; an older generation may have done

that under the strain of a twohour `wearifu' dreich' sermon, but these church goers are not to be caught

napping. They wear, on the contrary, a keen, expectant, critical look, which must be inexpressibly

encouraging to the minister, if he has anything to say. If he has not (and this is a possibility in Edinburgh, as

it is everywhere else), then I am sure it is wisdom for the beadle to lock him in, lest he flee when he meets

The Edinburgh sermon, though doubtless softened in outline in these later years, is still a more carefully built

discourse than one ordinarily hears out of Scotland, being constructed on conventional lines of doctrine,

exposition, logical inference, and practical application. Though modern preachers do not announce the

division of their subject into heads and subheads, firstlies and secondlies and finallies, my brethren, there

seems to be the old framework underneath the sermon, and every one recognises it as moving silently below

the surface; at least, I always fancy that as the minister finishes one point and attacks another the younger

folk fix their eagle eyes on him afresh, and the whole congregation sits up straighter and listens more intently,

as if making mental notes. They do not listen so much as if they were enthralled, though they often are, and

have good reason to be, but as if they were to pass an examination on the subject afterwards; and I have no

The prayers are many, and are divided, apparently, like those of the liturgies, into petitions, confessions, and

aspirations; not forgetting the allembracing one with which we are perfectly familiar in our native land, in

which the preacher commends to the Fatherly care every animate and inanimate thing not mentioned

specifically in the foregoing supplications. It was in the middle of this compendious petition, `the lang

prayer,' that rheumatic old Scottish dames used to make a practice of `cheengin' the fit,' as they stood

devoutly through it. "When the meenister comes to the `ingetherin' o' the Gentiles,' I ken weel it's time to

cheenge legs, for then the prayer is jist half dune," said a good sermontaster of Fife.

The organ is finding its way rapidly into the Scottish kirks (how can the shade of John Knox endure a `kist o'

whistles' in good St. Giles'?), but it is not used yet in some of those we attend most frequently. There is a

certain quaint solemnity, a beautiful austerity, in the unaccompanied singing of hymns that touches me

profoundly. I am often carried very high on the waves of splendid church music, when the organ's thunder

rolls `through vaulted aisles' and the angelic voices of a trained choir chant the aspirations of my soul for me;

and when an Edinburgh congregation stands, and the precentor leads in that noble paraphrase,

there is a certain ascetic fervour in it that seems to me the perfection of worship. It may be that my Puritan

ancestors are mainly responsible for this feeling, or perhaps my recently adopted Jenny Geddes is a factor in

it; of course, if she were in the habit of flinging fauldstules at Deans, she was probably the friend of truth and

There is no music during the offertory in these churches, and this, too, pleases my sense of the fitness of

things. It cannot soften the woe of the people who are disinclined to the giving away of money, and the

cheerful givers need no encouragement. For my part, I like to sit, quite undistracted by soprano solos, and

listen to the refined tinkle of the sixpences and shillings, and the vulgar chink of the pennies and ha'pennies,

in the contributionboxes. Country ministers, I am told, develop such an acute sense of hearing that they can

estimate the amount of the collection before it is counted. There is often a huge pewter plate just within the

church door, in which the offerings are placed as the worshippers enter or leave; and one always notes the

preponderance of silver at the morning, and of copper at the evening services. It is perhaps needless to say

that before Francesca had been in Edinburgh a fortnight she asked Mr. Macdonald if it were true that the

Scots continued coining the farthing for years and years, merely to have a piece of money serviceable for

As to social differences in the congregations we are somewhat at sea. We tried to arrive at a conclusion by the

hats and bonnets, than which there is usually no more infallible test. On our first Sunday we attended the Free

Kirk in the morning, and the Established in the evening. The bonnets of the Free Kirk were so much the more

elegant that we said to one another, "This is evidently the church of society, though the adjective 'Free' should

by rights attract the masses." On the second Sunday we reversed the order of things, and found the

Established bonnets much finer than the Free bonnets, which was a source of mystification to us, until we

discovered that it was a question of morning or evening service, not of the form of Presbyterianism. We

think, on the whole, that, taking town and country congregations together, millinery has not flourished under

Presbyterianism,it seems to thrive better in the Romish atmosphere of France; but the Disruption at least,

has had nothing to answer for in the matter, as it appears simply to have parted the bonnets of Scotland in

I can never forget our first military service at St. Giles'. We left Breadalbane Terrace before nine in the

morning and walked along the beautiful curve of street that sweeps around the base of the Castle

Rock,walked on through the poverty and squalor of the High Street, keeping in view the beautiful lantern

We joined the throng outside the venerable church, and awaited the approach of the soldiers from the Castle

paradeground; for it is from there they march in detachments to the church of their choice. A religion they

must have, and if, when called up and questioned about it, they have forgotten to provide themselves, or have

no preference as to form of worship, they are assigned to one by the person in authority. When the regiments

are assembled on the paradeground of a Sunday morning, the first command is, `Church of Scotland, right

about face, quick march!'the bodies of men belonging to other denominations standing fast until their turn

comes to move. It is said that a new officer once gave the command, `Church of Scotland, right about face,

Just as we were being told this story by an attendant squire, there was a burst of scarlet and a blare of music,

and down Castlehill and the Lawnmarket into Parliament Square marched hundreds of redcoats, the Highland

pipers (otherwise the Olympian gods) swinging in front, leaving the American female heart prostrate beneath

their victorious tread. The strains of music that in the distance sounded so martial and triumphant we

recognised in a moment as `Abide with me,' and never did the fine old tune seem more majestic than when it

marked a measure for the steady tramp, tramp, tramp, of those soldierly feet. As `The March of the Cameron

Men,' piped from the green steeps of Castlehill, had aroused in us thoughts of splendid victories on the

battlefield, so did this simple hymn awake the spirit of the church militant; a no less stern but more spiritual

soldiership, in which `the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace.'

As I fell asleep on that first Sunday night in Edinburgh, after the somewhat unusual experience of three

church services in a single day, three separate notes of memory floated in and out of the fabric of my dreams;

the sound of the soldiers' feet marching into old St. Giles' to the strains of `Abide with me'; the voice of the

Reverend Ronald ringing out with manly insistence: `It is aspiration that counts, not realisation; pursuit, not

achievement; quest, not conquest!'and the closing phrases of the Friar's prayer; `When Christ has forgiven

us, help us to forgive ourselves! Help us to forgive ourselves so fully that we can even forget ourselves,

remembering only Him! And so let His kingdom come; we ask it for the King's sake, Amen.'

Even at this time of Assemblies, when the atmosphere is almost exclusively clerical and ecclesiastical, the

two great church armies represented here certainly conceal from the casual observer all rivalries and

jealousies, if indeed they cherish any. As for the two dissenting bodies, the Church of the Disruption and the

Church of the Secession have been keeping company, so to speak, for some years, with a distant eye to an

eventual union. In the light of all this pleasant toleration, it seems difficult to realise that earlier Edinburgh,

where, we learned from old parochial records of 1605, Margaret Sinclair was cited by the Session of the Kirk

for being at the `Burne' for water on the Sabbath; that Janet Merling was ordered to make public repentance

for concealing a bairn unbaptized in her house for the space of twenty weeks and calling said bairn Janet; that

Pat Richardson had to crave mercy for being found in his boat in time of afternoon service; and that Janet

Walker, accused of having visitors in her house in sermontime, had to confess her offence and on her knees

crave mercy of God AND the Kirk Session (which no doubt was much worse) under penalty of a hundred

pounds Scots. Possibly there are people yet who would prefer to pay a hundred pounds rather than hear a

It was in the early seventeen hundred and thirties when Allan Ramsay, `in fear and trembling of legal and

clerical censure,' lent out the plays of Congreve and Farquhar from his famous High Street library. In 1756 it

was, that the Presbytery of Edinburgh suspended all clergymen who had witnessed the representation of

Douglas, that virtuous tragedy written, to the dismay of all Scotland, by a minister of the Kirk. That the

world, even the theological world, moves with tolerable rapidity when once set in motion, is evinced by the

fact that on Mrs. Siddons' second engagement in Edinburgh, in the summer of 1785, vast crowds gathered

about the doors of the theatre, not at night alone, but in the day, to secure places. It became necessary to

admit them first at three in the afternoon and then at noon, and eventually `the General Assembly of the

Church then in session was compelled to arrange its meetings with reference to the appearance of the great

actress.' How one would have enjoyed hearing that Scotsman say, after one of her most splendid flights of

tragic passion, `That's no bad!' We have read of her dismay at this ludicrous parsimony of praise, but her

selfrespect must have been restored when the Edinburgh ladies fainted by dozens during her impersonation

Since Scottish hospitality is wellnigh inexhaustible, it is not strange that from the moment Edinburgh streets

began to be crowded with ministers, our drawingroom table began to bear shoals of engraved invitations of

`The PurseBearer is commanded by the Lord High Commissioner and the Marchioness of Heatherdale to

invite Miss Hamilton to a Garden Party at the Palace of Holyrood House, on the 27th of May. WEATHER

`The General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland admits Miss Hamilton to any gallery on any day.'

`The Marchioness of Heatherdale is At Home on the 26th of May from a quarterpast nine in the evening.

`The Moderator of the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland is At Home in the Library of the

`The Moderator asks the pleasure of Miss Hamilton's presence at a Breakfast to be given on the morning of

We determined to go to all these functions impartially, tracking thus the Presbyterian lion to his very lair, and

observing his home as well as his company manners. In everything that related to the distinctively religious

side of the proceedings we sought advice from Mrs. M'Collop, while we went to Lady Baird for definite

information on secular matters. We also found an unexpected ally in the person of our own exModerator's

niece, Miss Jean Dalziel (Deeyell). She has been educated in Paris, but she must always have been a

delightfully breezy person, quite too irrepressible to be affected by Scottish haar or theology. "Go to the

Assemblies, by all means," she said, "and be sure and get places for the heresy case. These are no longer what

they once were,we are getting lamentably weak and gelatinous in our beliefs,but there is an unusually

nice one this year; the heretic is very young and handsome, and quite wicked, as ministers go. Don't fail to be

presented at the Marchioness's court at Holyrood, for it is a capital preparation for the ordeal of Her Majesty

and Buckingham Palace. `Nothing fit to wear'? You have never seen the people who go or you wouldn't say

that! I even advise you to attend one of the breakfasts; it can't do you any serious or permanent injury so long

as you eat something before you go. Oh no, it doesn't matter, whichever one you choose, you will

cheerfully omit the other; for I avow, as a Scottish spinster, and the niece of an exModerator, that to a

stranger and a foreigner the breakfasts are worse than Arctic explorations. If you do not chance to be at the

"The gifted Miss Hamilton is always at the table of honour; unless she is placed there she refuses to eat, and

"It is true," continued Miss Dalziel, "you will often sit beside a minister or a minister's wife, who will make

you scorn the sordid appetites of flesh, but if you do not, then eat as little as may be, and flee up the Mound

"My niece's tongue is an unruly member," said the exModerator, who was present at this diatribe, "and the

principal mistakes she makes in her judgment of these clerical feasts is that she criticises them as

conventional repasts, whereas they are intended to be informal meetings together of people who wish to be

"Hot bacon and eggs would be no harm to friendship," answered Miss Dalziel, with an affectionate moue.

"Cold bacon and eggs is better than cold piety," said the ex Moderator, "and it may be a good discipline for

It is to Mrs. M'Collop that we owe our chief insight into technical church matters, although we seldom agree

with her `opeenions' after we gain our own experience. She never misses hearing one sermon on a Sabbath,

and oftener she listens to two or three. Neither does she confine herself to the ministrations of a single

preacher, but roves from one sanctuary to another, seeking the bread of life, often, however, according to

She is thus a complete guide to the Edinburgh pulpit, and when she is making a bed in the morning she

dispenses criticism in so large and impartial a manner that it would make the flesh of the `meenistry' creep

were it overheard. I used to think Ian Maclaren's sermontaster a possible exaggeration of an existent type,

"Ye'll be tryin' anither kirk the morn?" suggests Mrs. M'Collop, spreading the clean Sunday sheet over the

mattress. "Wha did ye hear the Sawbath that's bye? Dr. A? Ay, I ken him ower weel; he's been there for

fifteen years an' mair. Ay, he's a gifted monAFF AN' ON!' with an emphasis showing clearly that, in her

estimation, the times when he is `aff' outnumber those when he is `on' . . . "Ye havena heard auld Dr. B yet?"

(Here she tucks in the upper sheet tidily at the foot.) "He's a graund strachtforrit mon, is Dr. B, forbye he's

growin' maist awfu' dreich in his sermons, though when he's that wearisome a body canna heed him wi'oot

takin' peppermints to the kirk, he's nane the less, at seeventysax, a better mon than the new asseestant. Div

ye ken the new asseestant? He's a weebit, fingerfed mannie, ower sma' maist to wear a goon! I canna thole

him, wi' his langnebbit words, explainin' an' expoundin' the gude Book as if it had jist come oot! The auld

doctor's nae kirkfiller, but he gies us fu' meesure, pressed doun an' rinnin' ower, nae bit pickin's like the

haverin' asseestant; it's my opeenion he's no soond, wi' his parleyvoos an' his clishmaclavers! . . . Mr. C?"

(Now comes the shaking and straightening and smoothing of the first blanket.) "Ay, he's weel eneuch! I mind

aince he prayed for oor Free Assembly, an' then he turned roon' an' prayed for the Estaiblished, maist in the

same breath,he's a broad, leeberal mon is Mr. C! . . . Mr. D? Ay, I ken him fine; he micht be waur, though

he's ower fond o' the kittle pairts o' the Old Testament; but he reads his sermon frae the paper, an' it's an auld

sayin', `If a meenister canna mind [remember] his ain discoorse, nae mair can the congregation be expectit to

mind it.' . . . Mr. E? He's my ain meenister." (She has a pillow in her mouth now, but though she is shaking it

as a terrier would a rat, and drawing on the linen slip at the same time, she is still intelligible between the

jerks). "Susanna says his sermon is like claith made o' soond `oo [wool] wi' a guid twined thread, an' wairpit

an' weftit wi' doctrine. Susanna kens her Bible weel, but she's never gaed forrit." (To `gang forrit' is to take

the communion). "Dr. F? I ca' him the greetin' doctor! He's aye dingin' the dust oot o' the poopit cushions, an'

greetin' ower the sins o' the human race, an' eespecially o' his ain congregation. He's waur sin his last wife

sickened an' slippit awa'. `Twas a chastenin' he'd put up wi' twice afore, but he grat nane the less. She was a

bonnie bit body, was the thurd Mistress F! E'nboro could `a' better spared the greetin' doctor than her, I'm

"The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, according to His good will and pleasure," I ventured piously, as

"Ou ay," responded that good woman, as she spread the counterpane over the pillows in the way I particularly

We were to make our bow to the Lord High Commissioner and the Marchioness of Heatherdale in the

evening, and we were in a state of republican excitement at 22 Breadalbane Terrace.

Francesca had surprised us by refusing to be presented at this semi royal Scottish court. "Not I," she said.

"The Marchioness represents the Queen; we may discover, when we arrive, that she has raised the standards

of admission, and requires us to `back out' of the throneroom. I don't propose to do that without London

training. Besides, I detest crowds, and I never go to my own President's receptions; and I have a headache,

anyway, and I don't feel like coping with the Reverend Ronald tonight!" (Lady Baird was to take us under

"Sally, my dear," I said, as Francesca left the room with a bottle of smellingsalts somewhat ostentatiously in

evidence, "methinks the damsel doth protest too much. In other words, she devotes a good deal of time and

discussion to a gentleman whom she heartily dislikes. As she is under your care, I will direct your attention to

"Ronald Macdonald is a Scotsman; Francesca disapproves of international alliances.

"I think, under all the circumstances, their acquaintance will bear watching. Two persons so utterly

dissimilar, and, so far as superficial observation goes, so entirely unsuited to each other, are quite likely to

"Nonsense!" returned Salemina brusquely. "You think because you are under the spell of the tender passion

"Salemina," I said pityingly, "I have always believed you a spinster from choice; don't lead me to think that

you have never had any experience in these matters! The Reverend Ronald has also intimated to me as

plainly as he dared that he cannot bear the sight of Francesca. What do I gather from this statement? The

general conclusion that if it be true, it is curious that he looks at her incessantly."

"Her father allows what she permits him to allow. You know that perfectly well."

"Don't be profane, Salemina, and don't be unromantic, which is worse; but if you insist, trust in Providence."

"The hardest hearts melt if sufficient heat be applied. Did I take you to Newhaven and read you Christie

Johnstone on the beach for nought? Don't you remember Charles Reade said that the Scotch are icebergs,

with volcanoes underneath; thaw the Scotch ice, which is very cold, and you shall get to the Scotch fire,

"I wish he were extinct," said Salemina petulantly; "and I wish you wouldn't make me nervous."

"If you had any faculty of premonition, you wouldn't have waited for me to make you nervous."

"Others are singularly deficient" And at this moment Susanna Crum came in to announce Miss Jean

It was our almost daily practice to walk through the Old Town, and we were now familiar with every street

and close in that densely crowded quarter. Our quest for the sites of ancient landmarks never grew

monotonous, and we were always reconstructing, in imagination, the Cowgate, the Canongate, the

Lawnmarket, and the High Street, until we could see Auld Reekie as it was in bygone centuries. In those days

of continual war with England, people crowded their dwellings as near the Castle as possible, so floor was

piled upon floor, and flat upon flat, families ensconcing themselves above other families, the tendency being

ever skyward. Those who dwelt on top had no desire to spend their strength in carrying down the corkscrew

stairs matter which would descend by the force of gravity if pitched from the window or door; so the

wayfarer, especially after dusk, would be greeted with cries of `Get oot o' the gait!' or `Gardy loo!' which was

in the French `Gardez l'eau,' and which would have been understood in any language, I fancy, after a little

experience. The streets then were filled with the debris flung from a hundred upper windows, while certain

groundfloor tenants, such as butchers and candlemakers, contributed their full share to the fragrant heaps.

As for these too seldom used narrow turnpike stairs, imagine the dames of fashion tilting their vast hoops and

That swine roamed at will in these Elysian fields is to be presumed, since we have this amusing picture of

`So easy were the manners of the great, fabled to be so stiff and decorous,' says the author, `that Lady

Maxwell's daughter Jane, who afterward became the Duchess of Gordon, was seen riding a sow up the High

Street, while her sister Eglantine (afterwards Lady Wallace of Craigie) thumped lustily behind with a stick.'

No wonder, in view of all this, that King James VI., when about to bring home his `darrest spous,' Anne of

Denmark, wrote to the Provost, `For God's sake see a' things are richt at our hamecoming; a king with a

Had it not been for these royal homecomings and visits of distinguished foreigners, now and again aided by

something still more salutary, an occasional outbreak of the plague, the easygoing authorities would never

have issued any `cleaning edicts,' and the still easiergoing inhabitants would never have obeyed them. It was

these dark, tortuous wynds and closes, nevertheless, that made up the Court End of Old Edinbro'; for some

one writes in 1530, `Via vaccarum in qua habitant patricii et senatores urbis' (The nobility and chief senators

of the city dwell in the Cowgate). And as for the Canongate, this Saxon gaet or way of the Holy rood canons,

it still sheltered in 1753 `two dukes, sixteen earls, two dowager countesses, seven lords, seven lords of

session, thirteen baronets, four commanders of the forces in Scotland, and five eminent men,' fine game

Every corner bristles with memories. Here is the Stamp Office Close, from which the lovely Susanna,

Countess of Eglinton, was wont to issue on assembly nights; she, six feet in height, with a brilliantly fair

complexion, and a `face of the maist bewitching loveliness.' Her seven daughters and stepdaughters were all

conspicuously handsome, and it was deemed a goodly sight to watch the long procession of eight gilded

sedanchairs pass from the Stamp Office Close, bearing her and her stately brood to the Assembly Room,

amid a crowd that was `hushed with respect and admiration to behold their lofty and graceful figures step

Here itself is the site of those old assemblies, presided over at one time by the famous Miss Nicky Murray, a

directress of society affairs, who seems to have been a feminine premonition of Count d'Orsay and our own

M'Allister. Rather dull they must have been, those old Scotch balls, where Goldsmith saw the ladies and

It was halfpast nine in the evening when Salemina and I drove to Holyrood, our humble cabhorse jogging

faithfully behind Lady Baird's brougham, and it was the new experience of seeing Auld Reekie by lamplight

that called up these gay visions of other days, visions and days so thoroughly our mental property that we

could not help resenting the fact that women were hanging washing from the Countess of Eglinton's former

windows, and popping their unkempt heads out of the Duchess of Gordon's old doorway.

The Reverend Ronald is so kind! He enters so fully into our spirit of inquiry, and takes such pleasure in our

enthusiasms! He even sprang lightly out of Lady Baird's carriage and called to our `lamiter' to halt while he

showed us the site of the Black Turnpike, from whose windows Queen Mary saw the last of her kingdom's

"Here was the Black Turnpike, Miss Hamilton!" he cried; "and from here Mary went to Loch Leven, where

you Hamiltons and the Setons came gallantly to her help. Don't you remember the `far ride to the Solway

I looked with interest, though I was in such a state of delicious excitement that I could scarce keep my seat.

"Only a few minutes more, Salemina," I sighed, "and we shall be in the palace courtyard; then a probable

halfhour in crowded dressing rooms, with another halfhour in line, and then, then we shall be making our

best republican bow in the Gallery of the Kings! How I wish Mr. Beresford and Francesca were with us!

What do you suppose was her real reason for staying away? Some petty disagreement with our young

minister, I am sure. Do you think the dampness is taking the curl out of our hair? Do you suppose our gowns

will be torn to ribbons before the Marchioness sees them? Do you believe we shall look as well as anybody?

Privately, I think we must look better than anybody; but I always think that on my way to a party, never after

Mrs. M'Collop had asserted that I was `bonnie eneuch for ony court,' and I could not help wishing that `mine

ain dear Somebody' might see me in my French frock embroidered with silver thistles, and my `shower

bouquet' of Scottish bluebells tied loosely together. Salemina wore pinkypurple velvet; a real heather colour

When we had presented our cards of invitation at the palace doors, we joined the throng and patiently made

our way up the splendid staircases, past powdered lackeys without number, and, divested of our wraps, joined

another throng on our way to the throneroom, Salemina and I pressing those cards with our names `legibly

At last the moment came when, Lady Baird having preceded me, I handed my bit of pasteboard to the usher;

and hearing `Miss Hamilton' called in stentorian accents, I went forward in my turn, and executed a graceful

and elegant, but not too profound curtsy, carefully arranged to suit the semiroyal, semiecclesiastical

occasion. I had not divulged that fact even to Salemina, but I had worn Mrs. M'Collop's carpet quite

threadbare in front of the long mirror, and had curtsied to myself so many times in its crystal surface that I

had developed a sort of fictitious reverence for my reflected image. I had only begun my wellpractised

obeisance when Her Grace the Marchioness, to my mingled surprise and embarrassment, extended a gracious

hand and murmured my name in a particularly kind voice. She is fond of Lady Baird, and perhaps chose this

method of showing her friendship; or it may be that she noticed my silver thistles and Salemina's

heathercoloured velvet,they certainly deserved special recognition; or it may be that I was too beautiful to

The presentation over, we wandered through the spacious apartments, leaning from the open windows to hear

the music of the band playing in the courtyard below, looking at the royal portraits, and chatting with groups

of friends who appeared and reappeared in the throng. Finally Lady Baird sent for us to join her in a knot of

personages more or less distinguished, who had dined at the palace, and who were standing behind the

receiving party in a sort of sacred group. This indeed was a ground of vantage, and one could have stood

there for hours, watching all sorts and conditions of men and women bowing before the Lord High

Commissioner and the Marchioness, who, with her Cleopatralike beauty and scarlet gown, looked like a

Salemina and I watched the curtsying narrowly, with the view at first of improving our own obeisances for

Buckingham Palace; but truth to say we got no added light, and plainly most of the people had not worn

Suddenly we heard a familiar name announced, `Lord Colquhoun,' a distinguished judge who had lately been

raised to the peerage, and whom we often met at dinners; then `Miss Rowena Colquhoun'; and then in the

midst, we fancied, of an unusual stir at the entrance door 'Miss Francesca Van Buren Monroe.' I

involuntarily touched the Reverend Ronald's shoulder in my astonishment, while Salemina lifted her

After presentation, each person has fifteen or twenty feet of awful space to traverse in solitary and

defenceless majesty; scanned meanwhile by the maids of honour (who if they were truly honourable, would

turn their eyes another way), ladiesinwaiting, the sacred group in the rear, and the PurseBearer himself. I

had supposed that this functionary would keep the purse in his upper bureau drawer at home, when he was

not paying bills, but it seems that when on processional duty he carries a bag of red velvet quite a yard long

over his arm, where it looks not unlike a lady's operacloak. It would hold the sumtotal of all moneys

Under this appalling fire of inspection, some of the victims waddle, some hurry; some look up and down

nervously, others glance over the shoulder as if dreading to be apprehended; some turn red, others pale,

according to complexion and temperament; some swing their arms, other trip on their gowns; some twitch the

buttons of a glove, or tweak a flower or a jewel. Francesca rose superior to all these weaknesses, and I doubt

if the Gallery of the Kings ever served as a background for anything lovelier or more highbred than that

untitled slip of a girl from `the States.' Her trailing gown of pearlwhite satin fell in unbroken lustrous folds

behind her. Her beautiful throat and shoulders rose in statuesque whiteness from the mist of chiffon that

encircled them. Her dark hair showed a moonbeam parting that rested the eye, wearied by the contemplation

of waves and frizzes fresh from the curlingtongs. Her mother's pearls hung in ropes from neck to waist, and

the one spot of colour about her was the single American Beauty rose she carried. There is a patriotic florist

in Paris who grows these longstemmed empresses of the rosegarden, and Mr. Beresford sends some to me

every week. Francesca had taken the flower without permission, and I must say she was as worthy of it as it

She curtsied deeply, with no exaggerated ceremony, but with a sort of innocent and childlike gravity, while

the satin of her gown spread itself like a great blossom over the floor. Her head was bowed until the dark

lashes swept her crimson cheeks; then she rose again from the heart of the shimmering lily, with the one

splendid rose glowing against all her dazzling whiteness, and floated slowly across the dreaded space to the

door of exit as if she were preceded by invisible heralds and followed by invisible trainbearers.

"Who is she?" we heard whispered here and there. "Look at the rose!" "Look at the pearls! Is she a princess

I glanced at the Reverend Ronald. I imagined he looked pale; at any rate he was biting his under lip

nervously, and I believe he was in fancy laying his serious, Scottish, allopathic, Presbyterian heart at

"It is a pity Miss Monroe is such an ardent republican," he said, with unconcealed bitterness; "otherwise she

ought to be a duchess. I never saw a head that better suited a coronet, nor, if you will pardon me, one that

"It is true she flatly refused to accompany us here," I allowed, "but perhaps she has some explanation more or

less silly and serviceable; meantime, I defy you to tell me she isn't a beauty, and I implore you to say nothing

about its being only skindeep. Give me a beautiful exterior, say I, and I will spend my life in making the

hidden things of mind and soul conform to it; but deliver me from all forlorn attempts to make my beauty of

character speak through a large mouth, breathe through a fat nose, and look at my neighbour through crossed

Mr. Macdonald agreed with me, with some few ministerial reservations. He always agrees with me, and why

he is not tortured at the thought of my being the promised bride of another, but continues to squander his

affections upon a quarrelsome and unappreciative girl is more than I can comprehend.

Francesca, escorted by Lord Colquhoun, appeared presently in our group, but Salemina did not even attempt

to scold her. One cannot scold an imperious young beauty in white satin and pearls, particularly if she is

It seems that shortly after our departure (we had dined with Lady Baird), Lord Colquhoun had sent a note to

me, requiring an answer. Francesca had opened it, and found that he offered an extra card of invitation to one

of us, and said that he and his sister would gladly serve as escort to Holyrood, if desired. She had had an hour

or two of solitude by this time, and was well weary of it, while the last vestige of headache disappeared under

the temptation of appearing at court with all the eclat of unexpectedness. She despatched a note of acceptance

to Lord Colquhoun, summoned Mrs. M'Collop, Susanna, and the maiden Boots to her assistance, spread the

trays of her Saratoga trunks about our three bedrooms, grouped all our candles on her dressingtable, and

borrowed any trinket or bit of frippery which we chanced to have left behind. Her own store of adornments is

much greater than ours, but we possess certain articles for which she has a childlike admiration: my white

satin slippers embroidered with seed pearls, Salemina's pearltopped comb, Salemina's Valenciennes

handkerchief and diamond beltclasp, my pearl frog with ruby eyes. We identified our property on her

impertinent young person, and the list of her borrowings so amused the Reverend Ronald that he forgot his

"It is really an ordeal, that presentation, no matter how strong one's sense of humour may be, nor how well

rooted one's democracy," chattered Francesca to a serried rank of officers who surrounded her to the total

routing of the ministry. "It is especially trying if one has come unexpectedly and has no idea of what is to

happen. I was agitated at the supreme moment, because, at the entrance of the throneroom, I had just shaken

hands reverently with a splendid person who proved to be a footman. Of course I took him for the

Commander of the Queen's Guards, or the Keeper of the Dungeon Keys, or the Most Noble Custodian of the

Royal Moats, Drawbridges, and Portcullises. When he put out his hand I had no idea it was simply to waft me

onward, and so naturally I shook it,it's a mercy that I didn't kiss it! Then I curtsied to the Royal Usher, and

overlooked the Lord High Commissioner altogether, having no eyes for any one but the beautiful scarlet

Marchioness. I only hope they were too busy to notice my mistakes, otherwise I shall be banished from Court

at the very moment of my presentation.Do you still banish nowadays?" turning the battery of her eyes

upon a particularly insignificant officer who was far too dazed to answer. "And did you see the child of ten

who was next to me in line? She is Mrs. Macstronachlacher; at least that was the name on the card she

carried, and she was thus announced. As they tell us the Purse Bearer is most rigorous in arranging these

functions and issuing the invitations, I presume she must be Mrs. Macstronachlacher; but if so, they marry

It is our last day in `Scotia's darling seat,' our last day in Breadalbane Terrace, our last day with Mrs.

M'Collop; and though every one says that we shall love the life in the country, we are loath to leave Auld

Salemina and I have spent two days in search of an abidingplace, and have visited eight wellrecommended

villages with that end in view; but she disliked four of them, and I couldn't endure the other four, though I

considered some of those that fell under her disapproval as quite delightful in every respect.

We never take Francesca on these pilgrimages of disagreement, as three conflicting opinions on the same

subject would make insupportable what is otherwise rather exhilarating. She starts from Edinburgh

tomorrow for a brief visit to the Highlands with the Dalziels, and will join us when we have settled

Mr. Beresford leaves Paris as soon after our decision as he is permitted, so Salemina and I have agreed to

agree upon one ideal spot within thirtysix hours of our quitting Edinburgh, knowing privately that after a

last battleroyal we shall enthusiastically support the joint decision for the rest of our lives.

We have been bidding goodbye to people and places and things, and wishing the sun would not shine and

thus make our task the harder. We have looked our last on the old grey town from Calton Hill, of all places

the best, perhaps, for a view; since, as Stevenson says, from Calton Hill you can see the Castle, which you

lose from the Castle, and Arthur's Seat, which you cannot see from Arthur's Seat. We have taken a farewell

walk to the Dean Bridge, to gaze wistfully eastward and marvel for the hundredth time to find so beautiful a

spot in the heart of a city. The softflowing Water of Leith winding over pebbles between grassy banks and

groups of splendid trees, the roof of the little temple to Hygeia rising picturesquely among green branches,

the slopes of emerald velvet leading up to the grey stone of the houses,where, in all the world of cities, can

one find a view to equal it in peaceful loveliness? Francesca's `bridgeman,' who, by the way, proved to be a

distinguished young professor of medicine in the University, says that the beautiful cities of the world should

be ranked thus,Constantinople, Prague, Genoa, Edinburgh; but having seen only one of these, and that the

last, I refuse to credit any sliding scale of comparison which leaves Edina at the foot.

It was nearing teatime, an hour when we never fail to have visitors, and we were all in the drawingroom

together. I was at the piano, singing Jacobite melodies for Salemina's delectation. When I came to the last

verse of Lady Nairne's `Hundred Pipers,' the spirited words had taken my fancy captive, and I am sure I could

not have sung with more vigour and passion had my people been `out with the Chevalier.'

By the time I came to `Dumfounder'd the English saw,' Francesca left her book and joined in the next four

lines, and when we broke into the chorus Salemina rushed to the piano, and although she cannot sing, she

lifted her voice both high and loud in the refrain, beating time the while with a dirk paperknife.

Susanna ushered in Mr. Macdonald and Dr. Moncrieffe as the last `blaw' faded into silence, and Jean Dalziel

came upstairs to say that they could seldom get a quiet moment for family prayers, because we were always

at the piano, hurling incendiary sentiments into the air,sentiments set to such stirring melodies that no one

"We are very sorry, Miss Dalziel," I said penitently. "We reserve an hour in the morning and another at

bedtime for your uncle's prayers, but we had no idea you had them at afternoon tea, even in Scotland. I

believe that you are chaffing, and came up only to swell the chorus. Come, let us all sing together from

Mr. Macdonald and Dr. Moncrieffe gave such splendid body to the music, and Jean such warlike energy, that

Salemina waved her paper knife in a manner more than ever sanguinary, and Susanna, hesitating outside the

door for sheer delight, had to be coaxed in with the teathings. On the heels of the teathings came the

Dominie, another dear old friend of six weeks' standing; and while the doctor sang `Jock o' Hazeldean' with

such irresistible charm that we all longed to elope with somebody on the instant, Salemina dispensed buttered

toast, marmalade sandwiches, and the fragrant cup. By this time we were thoroughly cosy, and Mr.

Macdonald made himself and us very much at home by stirring the fire; whereupon Francesca embarrassed

him by begging him not to touch it unless he could do it properly, which, she added, seemed quite unlikely,

"What will Edinburgh do without you?" he asked, turning towards us with flattering sadness in his tone.

"Who will hear our Scotch stories, never suspecting their hoary old age? Who will ask us questions to which

we somehow always know the answers? Who will make us study and reverence anew our own landmarks?

"I think the national and local pride may be counted on to exist without any artificial stimulants," dryly

observed Francesca, whose spirit is not in the least quenched by approaching departure.

"Perhaps," answered the Reverend Ronald; "but at any rate, you, Miss Monroe, will always be able to reflect

"Isn't it strange that she cannot get on better with that charming fellow?" murmured Salemina, as she passed

"If your present symptoms of blindness continue, Salemina," I said, searching for a small lump so as to gain

time, "I shall write you a plaintive ballad, buy you a dog, and stand you on a street corner! If you had ever

permitted yourself to `get on' with any man as Francesca is getting on with Mr. Macdonald, you would now

"Do you know, doctor," asked the Dominie, "that Miss Hamilton shed real tears at Holyrood the other night,

"They were real," I confessed, "in the sense that they certainly were not crocodile tears; but I am somewhat at

a loss to explain them from a sensible, American standpoint. Of course my Jacobitism is purely impersonal,

though scarcely more so than yours, at this late day; at least it is merely a poetic sentiment, for which

Caroline, Baroness Nairne, is mainly responsible. My romantic tears came from a vision of the Bonnie Prince

as he entered Holyrood, dressed in his short tartan coat, his scarlet breeches and military boots, the star of St.

Andrew on his breast, a blue ribbon over his shoulder, and the famous blue velvet bonnet and white cockade.

He must have looked so brave and handsome and hopeful at that moment, and the moment was so sadly brief,

He did come back again to me that evening, and held a phantom levee behind the Marchioness of

Heatherdale's shoulder. His `ghaist' looked bonnie and rosy and confident, yet all the time the band was

I looked towards the fire to hide the moisture that crept again into my eyes, and my glance fell upon

Francesca sitting dreamily on a hassock in front of the cheerful blaze, her chin in the hollow of her palm, and

the Reverend Ronald standing on the hearthrug gazing at her, the poker in his hand, and his heart, I regret to

say, in such an exposed position on his sleeve that even Salemina could have seen it had she turned her eyes

Jean Dalziel broke the momentary silence: "I am sure I never hear the last two lines

without a lump in my throat," and she hummed the lovely melody. "It is all as you say, purely impersonal and

poetic. My mother is an Englishwoman, but she sings `Dumfounder'd the English saw, they saw' with the

"I think I was never so completely under the spell of a country as I am of Scotland." I made this

acknowledgment freely, but I knew that it would provoke comment from my compatriots.

"Oh yes, my dear, you have been just as spellbound before, only you don't remember it," replied Salemina

promptly. "I have never seen a person more perilously appreciative or receptive than you."

"'Perilously' is just the word," chimed in Francesca delightedly; "when you care for a place you grow porous,

as it were, until after a time you are precisely like blottingpaper. Now, there was Italy, for example. After

eight weeks in Venice, you were completely Venetian, from your fan to the ridiculous little crepe shawl you

wore because an Italian prince had told you that centuries were usually needed to teach a woman how to wear

a shawl, but that you had been born with the art, and the shoulders! Anything but a watery street was

repulsive to you. Cobblestones? `Ordinario, duro, brutto! A gondola? Ah, bellissima! Let me float for ever

thus!' You bathed your spirit in sunshine and colour; I can hear you murmur now, `O Venezia benedetta! non

"It was just the same when she spent a month in France with the Baroness de Hautenoblesse," continued

Salemina. "When she returned to America, it is no flattery to say that in dress, attitude, inflection, manner,

she was a thorough Parisienne. There was an elegant superficiality and a superficial elegance about her that I

can never forget, nor yet her extraordinary volubility in a foreign language,the fluency with which she

expressed her inmost soul on all topics without the aid of a single irregular verb, for these she was never able

to acquire; oh, it was wonderful, but there was no affectation about it; she had simply been a kind of

blottingpaper, as Miss Monroe says, and France had written itself all over her."

"I don't wish to interfere with anybody's diagnosis," I interposed at the first possible moment, "but perhaps

after you've both finished your psychologic investigation the subject may be allowed to explain herself from

the inside, so to speak. I won't deny the spell of Italy, but I think the spell that Scotland casts over one is quite

a different thing, more spiritual, more difficult to break. Italy's charm has something physical in it; it is born

of blue sky, sunlit waves, soft atmosphere, orange sails, and yellow moons, and appeals more to the senses. In

Scotland the climate certainly has nought to do with it, but the imagination is somehow made captive. I am

"Of course you are not at the present moment," said Francesca, "because you are enthralled by the past of

"I never was particularly enthralled by Italy's past," I argued with exemplary patience, "but the romance of

"There!" I exclaimed triumphantly, "you see for yourselves you have named avenue after avenue along which

one's mind is led in charmed subjection. Where can you find battles that kindle your fancy like Falkirk and

Flodden and Culloden and Bannockburn? Where a sovereign that attracts, baffles, repels, allures, like Mary

Queen of Scots, and where, tell me where, is there a Pretender like Bonnie Prince Charlie? Think of the

"Yes," chimed in Salemina when I had finished quoting, "or that other verse that goes

Isn't the enthusiasm almost beyond belief at this distance of time?" she went on; "and isn't it a curious fact, as

Mr. Macdonald told me a moment ago, that though the whole country was vocal with songs for the lost cause

"Sympathy for the under dog, as Miss Monroe's countrywomen would say picturesquely," remarked Mr.

"I don't see why all the vulgarisms in the dictionary should be foisted on the American girl," retorted

Francesca loftily, "unless, indeed, it is a determined attempt to find spots upon the sun for fear we shall

"Quite so, quite so!" returned the Reverend Ronald, who has had reason to know that this phrase reduces

"The Stuart charm and personal magnetism must have been a powerful factor in all that movement," said

Salemina, plunging hastily back into the topic to avert any further recrimination. "I suppose we feel it even

now, and if I had been alive in 1745 I should probably have made myself ridiculous. `Old maiden ladies,' I

read this morning, `were the last leal Jacobites in Edinburgh; spinsterhood in its loneliness remained ever true

"Yes," continued the Dominie, "the story is told of the last of those Jacobite ladies who never failed to close

her PrayerBook and stand erect in silent protest when the prayer for `King George III. and the reigning

"Do you remember the prayer of the Reverend Neil M'Vicar in St. Cuthbert's?" asked Mr. Macdonald. "It was

in 1745, after the victory at Prestonpans, when a message was sent to the Edinburgh ministers, in the name of

`Charles, Prince Regent' desiring them to open their churches next day as usual. M'Vicar preached to a large

congregation, many of whom were armed Highlanders, and prayed for George II., and also for Charles

Edward, in the following fashion: `Bless the king! Thou knowest what king I mean. May the crown sit long

upon his head! As for that young man who has come among us to seek an earthly crown, we beseech Thee to

"Ah, what a pity the Bonnie Prince had not died after his meteor victory at Falkirk!" exclaimed Jean Dalziel,

"Or at Culloden, `where, quenched in blood on the Muir of Drummossie, the star of the Stuarts sank forever,'"

quoted the Dominie. "There is where his better self died; would that the young Chevalier had died with it! By

the way, doctor, we must not sit here eating goodies and sipping tea until the dinnerhour, for these ladies

have doubtless much to do for their flitting" (a pretty Scots word for `moving').

"We are quite ready for our flitting so far as packing is concerned," Salemina assured him. "Would that we

were as ready in spirit! Miss Hamilton has even written her farewell poem, which I am sure she will read for

"She will read it without that formality," murmured Francesca. "She has lived and toiled only for this

"Delightful!" said the doctor flatteringly. "Has she favoured you already? Have you heard it, Miss Monroe?"

"Have we heard it!" ejaculated that young person. "We have heard nothing else all the morning! What you

will take for local colour is nothing but our mental lifeblood, which she has mercilessly drawn to stain her

verses. We each tried to write a Scottish poem, and as Miss Hamilton's was better, or perhaps I might say less

bad, than ours, we encouraged her to develop and finish it. I wanted to do an imitation of Lindsay's

but it proved too difficult. Miss Hamilton's general idea was that we should write some verses in good plain

English. Then we were to take out all the final g's, and indeed the final letters from all the words wherever it

was possible, so that full, awful, call, ball, hall, and away should be fu', awfu', ca', ba', ha', an' awa'. This

alone gives great charm and character to a poem; but we were also to change all words ending in ow into aw.

This doesn't injure the verse, you see, as blaw and snaw rhyme just as well as blow and snow, beside bringing

tears to the common eye with their poetic associations. Similarly, if we had daughter and slaughter, we were

to write them dochter and slauchter, substituting in all cases doon, froon, goon, and toon, for down, frown

gown, and town. Then we made a list of Scottish idols,pet words, national institutions, stock phrases,

beloved objects,convinced if we could weave them in we should attain `atmosphere.' Here is the first list; it

lengthened speedily: thistle, tartan, haar, haggis, kirk, claymore, parritch, broom, whin, sporran, whaup, plaid,

scone, collops, whisky, mutch, cairngorm, oatmeal, brae, kilt, brose, heather. Salemina and I were too

devoted to commonsense to succeed in this weaving process, so Penelope triumphed and won the first prize,

both for that and also because she brought in a saying given us by Miss Dalziel, about the social classification

of all Scotland into `the gentlemen of the North, men of the South, people of the West, fowk o' Fife, and the

Paisley bodies.' We think that her success came chiefly from her writing the verses with a Scotch plaid

leadpencil. What effect the absorption of so much red, blue, and green paint will have I cannot fancy, but

she ate offand upall the tartan glaze before finishing the poem; it had a wonderfully stimulating effect,

Of course there was a chorus of laughter when the young wretch exhibited my battered pencil, bought in

Princes Street yesterday, its gay Gordon tints sadly disfigured by the destroying tooth, not of Time, but of a

"We bestowed a consolation prize on Salemina," continued Francesca, "because she succeeded in getting

hoots, losh, havers, and blethers into one line, but naturally she could not maintain such an ideal standard.

Read your verses, Pen, though there is little hope that our friends will enjoy them as much as you do.

Whenever Miss Hamilton writes anything of this kind, she emulates her distinguished ancestor Sir William

Hamilton, who always fell off his own chair in fits of laughter when he was composing verses."

I fancied that I had pitched my verses in so high a key that no one could mistake their burlesque intention.

What was my confusion, however, to have one of the company remark when I finished, `Extremely pretty;

but a mutch, you know, is an article of WOMAN'S apparel, and would never be worn with a kilt!'

Mr. Macdonald flung himself gallantly into the breach. He is such a dear fellow! So quick, so discriminating,

"Don't pick flaws in Miss Hamilton's finest line! That picture of a fair American, clad in a kilt and mutch,

decked in heather and scones, and brandishing a claymore, will live for ever in my memory. Don't clip the

wings of her imagination! You will be telling her soon that one doesn't tie one's hair with thistles, nor couple

Somebody sent Francesca a great bunch of yellow broom, late that afternoon. There was no name in the box,

she said, but at night she wore the odorous tips in the bosom of her black dinnergown, and standing erect in

When she came into my room to say good night, she laid the pretty frock in one of my trunks, which was to

be filled with garments of fashionable society and left behind in Edinburgh. The next moment I chanced to

look on the floor, and discovered a little card, a bent card with two lines written on it:

We have received many invitations in that handwriting. I know it well, and so does Francesca, though it is

blurred; and the reason for this, according to my way of thinking, is that it has been lying next the moist

stems of flowers, and unless I do her wrong, very near to somebody's warm heart as well.

I will not betray her to Salemina, even to gain a victory over that blind and deaf but much beloved woman.

How could I, with my heart beating high at the thought of seeing my ain dear laddie before many days?

We are in the East Neuk o' Fife; we are in Pettybaw; we are neither boarders nor lodgers; we are residents,

inhabitants, householders, and we live (live, mind you) in a wee theekit hoosie in the old loaning. Words fail

to tell you how absolutely Scotch we are and how blissfully happy. It is a happiness, I assure you, achieved

through great tribulation. Salemina and I travelled many miles in railway trains, and many in various other

sorts of wheeled vehicles, while the ideal ever beckoned us onward. I was determined to find a romantic

lodging, Salemina a comfortable one, and this special combination of virtues is next to impossible, as every

one knows. Linghurst was too much of a town; Bonnie Craig had no respectable inn; Winnybrae was

struggling to be a wateringplace; Broomlea had no golfcourse within ten miles, and we intended to go back

to our native land and win silver goblets in mixed foursomes; the `new toun o' Fairlock' (which looked

centuries old) was delightful, but we could not find apartments there; Pinkie Leith was nice, but they were

tearing up the `fore street' and laying drainpipes in it. Strathdee had been highly recommended, but it rained

when we were in Strathdee, and nobody can deliberately settle in a place where it rains during the process of

deliberation. No train left this moist and dripping hamlet for three hours, so we took a covered trap and drove

onward in melancholy mood. Suddenly the clouds lifted and the rain ceased; the driver thought we should be

having settled weather now, and put back the top of the carriage, saying meanwhile that it was a verra dry

"Of course, if there is any district in Scotland where for any reason droughts are possible, that is where we

wish to settle," I whispered to Salemina; "though, so far as I can see, the Strathdee crops are up to their knees

"Susanna Crum's father! How curious that he should live here!" I murmured; and at this moment the sun

"Pettybaw! Petit bois, I suppose," said Salemina; "and there, to be sure, it is,the `little wood' yonder."

We drove to the Pettybaw Inn and Posting Establishment, and, alighting, dismissed the driver. We had still

three good hours of daylight, although it was five o'clock, and we refreshed ourselves with a delicious cup of

tea before looking for lodgings. We consulted the greengrocer, the baker, and the flesher, about furnished

apartments, and started on our quest, not regarding the little posting establishment as a possibility.

Apartments we found to be very scarce, and in one or two places that were quite suitable the landlady refused

to do any cooking. We wandered from house to house, the sun shining brighter and brighter, and Pettybaw

looking lovelier and lovelier; and as we were refused shelter again and again, we grew more and more

enamoured, as is the manner of human kind. The blue sea sparkled, and Pettybaw Sands gleamed white a

mile or two in the distance, the pretty stone church raised its curved spire from the green trees, the manse

next door was hidden in vines, the sheep lay close to the grey stone walls and the young lambs nestled beside

them, while the song of the burn, tinkling merrily down the glade on the edge of which we stood, and the

Salemina, under the influence of this sylvan solitude, nobly declared that she could and would do without a

"I think, on the whole, we should be more comfortable living near to the innkeeper's heart," I answered. "Let

us go back there and pass the night, trying thus the bed and breakfast, with a view to seeing what they are

likealthough they did say in Edinburgh that nobody thinks of living in these wayside hostelries."

Back we went, accordingly, and after ordering dinner came out and strolled idly up the main street. A small

Within.' Inquiring within with all possible speed, we found the draper selling winceys, the draper's assistant

tidying the ribbonbox, the draper's wife sewing in one corner, and the draper's baby playing on the clean

floor. We were impressed favourably, and entered into negotiations without delay.

"The house will be in the loaning; do you mind, ma'am?" asked the draper. (We have long since discovered

that this use of the verb is a bequest from the Gaelic, in which there is no present tense. Man never is, but

always to be blessed, in that language, which in this particular is not unlike oldfashioned Calvinism.)

We went out of the back door and down the green loaning, until we came to the wee stone cottage in which

the draper himself lives most of the year, retiring for the warmer months to the back of his shop, and eking

The thatched roof on the wing that formed the kitchen attracted my artist's eye, and we went in to examine

the interior, which we found surprisingly attractive. There was a tiny sittingroom, with a fireplace and a

microscopic piano; a diningroom adorned with portraits of relatives who looked nervous when they met my

eye, for they knew that they would be turned face to the wall on the morrow; four bedrooms, a kitchen, and a

back garden so filled with vegetables and flowers that we exclaimed with astonishment and admiration.

"But we cannot keep house in Scotland," objected Salemina. "Think of the care! And what about the

"Why not eat at the inn?" I suggested. "Think of living in a real loaning, Salemina! Look at the stone floor in

the kitchen, and the adorable stuffy boxbed in the wall! Look at the bust of Sir Walter in the hall, and the

chromo of Melrose Abbey by moonlight! Look at the lintel over the front door, with a ship, moon, stars, and

Salemina agreed that it was hardly worth considering; and in truth so many landladies had refused to receive

her as a tenant that day that her spirits were rather low, and she was uncommonly flexible.

"It is the lintel and the back garden that rents the hoose," remarked the draper complacently in broad Scotch

that I cannot reproduce. He is a houseagent as well as a draper, and went on to tell us that when he had a

cottage he could rent in no other way he planted plenty of creepers in front of it. "The baker's hoose is no sae

bonnie," he said, "and the linen and cutlery verra scanty, but there is a yellow laburnum growin' by the door:

the leddies see that, and forget to ask aboot the linen. It depends a good bit on the weather, too; it is easy to

"We hardly dare undertake regular housekeeping," I said; "do your tenants ever take meals at the inn?"

"If we did that, we should still need a servant to keep the house tidy," said Salemina, as we walked away.

This gave me an idea, and I slipped over to the postoffice while Salemina was preparing for dinner, and

despatched a telegram to Mrs. M'Collop at Breadalbane Terrace, asking her if she could send a reliable

general servant to us, capable of cooking simple breakfasts and caring for a house.

We had scarcely finished our Scotch broth, fried haddies, mutton chops, and rhubarb tart when I received an

answer from Mrs. M'Collop to the effect that her sister's husband's niece, Jane Grieve, could join us on the

morrow if we desired. The relationship was an interesting fact, though we scarcely thought the information

worth the additional pennies we paid for it in the telegram; however, Mrs. M'Collop's comfortable assurance,

together with the quality of the rhubarb tart and muttonchops, brought us to a decision. Before going to

sleep we rented the draper's house, named it BideaWee Cottage, engaged daily luncheons and dinners for

three persons at the Pettybaw Inn and Posting Establishment, telegraphed to Edinburgh for Jane Grieve, to

Callander for Francesca, and despatched a letter to Paris for Mr. Beresford, telling him we had taken a `wee

"Possibly it would have been wiser not send for them until we were settled," I said reflectively. "Jane Grieve

"The name somehow sounds too young and inexperienced," observed Salemina, "and what association have I

The only thing that troubles me," I went on, "is the question of Willie Beresford's place of residence. He

expects to be somewhere within easy walking or cycling distance,four or five miles at most."

"He won't be desolate even if he doesn't have a thatched roof, a pansy garden, and a blossoming shrub," said

Salemina sleepily, for our business arrangements and discussions had lasted well into the evening. "What he

will want is a lodging where he can have frequent sight and speech of you. How I dread him! How I resent

his sharing of you with us! I don't know why I use the word `sharing,' forsooth! There is nothing half so fair

and just in his majesty's greedy mind. Well, it's the way of the world; only it is odd, with the universe of

women to choose from, that he must needs take you. Strathdee seems the most desirable place for him, if he

has a macintosh and rubber boots. Inchcaldy is another town near here that we didn't see at allthat might

"Inchcaldy? Oh yes, I think we heard of it in Edinburghat least I have some association with the name: it

has a fine golfcourse, I believe, and very likely we ought to have looked at it, although for my part I have no

regrets. Nothing can equal Pettybaw; and I am so pleased to be a Scottish householder! Aren't we just like

Think of our stonefloored kitchen, Salemina! Think of the real boxbed in the wall for little Jane Grieve!

She will have redgold hair, blue eyes, and a pink cotton gown. Think of our own cat! Think how Francesca

will admire the 1602 lintel! Think of our back garden, with our own `neeps' and vegetable marrows growing

in it! Think how they will envy us at home when they learn that we have settled down into Scottish

Think of Willie coming to step on the floor and look at the bed and stroke the cat and covet the lintel and

walk in the garden and weed the turnips and pluck the marrows that grow by our ain wee theekit hoosie!"

"Penelope, you appear slightly intoxicated! Do close the window and come to bed."

"I am intoxicated with the caller air of Pettybaw," I rejoined, leaning on the windowsill and looking at the

stars, while I thought: "Edinburgh was beautiful; it is the most beautiful grey city in the world; it lacked one

The next day was one of the most cheerful and one of the most fatiguing that I ever spent. Salemina and I

moved every article of furniture in our wee theekit hoosie from the place where it originally stood to another

and a better place: arguing, of course, over the precise spot it should occupy, which was generally upstairs if

the thing were already down, or downstairs if it were already up. We hid all the more hideous ornaments of

the draper's wife, and folded away her most objectionable tidies and tablecovers, replacing them with our

own pretty draperies. There were only two pictures in the sittingroom, and as an artist I would not have

parted with them for worlds. The first was The Life of a Fireman, which could only remind one of the

explosion of a mammoth tomato, and the other was The Spirit of Poetry calling Burns from the Plough. Burns

wore white kneebreeches, military boots, a splendid waistcoat with lace ruffles, and carried a cocked hat. To

have been so dressed he must have known the Spirit was intending to come. The ploughhorse was a

magnificent Arabian, whose tail swept the freshly furrowed earth, while the Spirit of Poetry was issuing from

a practicable wigwam on the left, and was a lady of such ample dimensions that no poet would have dared

The diningroom was blighted by framed photographs of the draper's relations and the draper's wife's

relations; all uniformly ugly. It seems strange that married couples having the least beauty to bequeath to

their offspring should persist in having the largest families. These ladies and gentlemen were too numerous to

remove, so we obscured them with trailing branches; reflecting that we only breakfasted in the room, and the

morning meal is easily digested when one lives in the open air. We arranged flowers everywhere, and bought

potted plants at a little nursery hard by. We apportioned the bedrooms, giving Francesca the hardest bed,as

she is the youngest, and wasn't here to choose,me the next hardest, and Salemina the best; Francesca the

largest lookingglass and wardrobe, me the best view, and Salemina the largest bath. We bought

housekeeping stores, distributing our patronage equally between the two grocers; we purchased aprons and

dustcloths from the rival drapers, engaged bread and rolls from the baker, milk and cream from the plumber

(who keeps three cows), interviewed the flesher about chops; in fact, no young couple facing love in a cottage

ever had a busier or happier time than we; and at sundown, when Francesca arrived, we were in the pink of

order, standing under our own lintel, ready to welcome her to Pettybaw. As to being strangers in a strange

land, we had a bowing acquaintance with everybody on the main street of the tiny village, and were on terms

Francesca was delighted with everything, from the station (Pettybaw Sands, two miles away) to Jane Grieve's

name, which she thought as perfect, in its way, as Susanna Crum's. She had purchased a `tirlingpin,' that

oldtime precursor of knockers and bells, at an antique shop in Oban, and we fastened it on the front door at

once, taking turns at risping it until our own nerves were shattered, and the draper's wife ran down the

loaning to see if we were in need of anything. The twisted bar of iron stands out from the door and the ring is

drawn up and down over a series of nicks, making a rasping noise. The lovers and ghaists in the old ballads

Francesca brought us letters from Edinburgh, and what was my joy, in opening Willie's, to learn that he

begged us to find a place in Fifeshire, and as near St. Rules or Strathdee as convenient; for in that case he

could accept an invitation he had just received to visit his friend Robin Anstruther, at Rowardennan Castle.

"It is not the visit at the castle I wish so much, you may be sure," he wrote, "as the fact that Lady Ardmore

will make everything pleasant for you. You will like my friend Robin Anstruther, who is Lady Ardmore's

youngest brother, and who is going to her to be nursed and coddled after a baddish accident in the

"I suppose she has more room on her list in the country than she had in Edinburgh; but if my remembrance

serves me, she always enrolls a goodly number of victims, whether she has any immediate use for them or

"Mr. Beresford's manners have not been improved by his residence in Paris," observed Francesca, with

"Mr. Beresford's manners are always perfect," said Salemina loyally, "and I have no doubt that this visit to

Lady Ardmore will be extremely pleasant for him, though very embarrassing to us. If we are thrown into

forced intimacy with a castle" (Salemina spoke of it as if it had fangs and a lashing tail), "what shall we do in

"Salemina!" I expostulated, "bears will devour you as they did the ungrateful child in the fairytale. I wonder

at your daring to use the word `hut' in connection with our wee theekit hoosie!"

"They will never understand that we are doing all this for the novelty of it," she objected. "The Scottish

nobility and gentry probably never think of renting a house for a joke. Imagine Lord and Lady Ardmore, the

young Ardmores, Robin Anstruther, and Willie Beresford calling upon us in this sittingroom! We ourselves

"All will be well," Francesca assured her soothingly. "We shall be pardoned much because we are Americans,

and will not be expected to know any better. Besides, the gifted Miss Hamilton is an artist, and that covers a

multitude of sins against conventionality. When the castle people `tirl at the pin,' I will appear as the maid, if

"And it isn't as if there were many houses to choose from, Salemina, nor as if BideaWee cottage were

cheap," I continued. "Think of the rent we pay and keep your head high. Remember that the draper's wife

says there is nothing half so comfortable in Inchcaldy, although that is twice as large a town."

"INCHCALDY!" ejaculated Francesca, sitting down heavily upon the sofa and staring at me.

"Inchcaldy, my dear,spelled CALDY, but pronounced CAWDY; the town where you are to take your

"Well," she exclaimed bitterly, "of course Scotland is a small, insignificant country; but, tiny as it is, it

presents some liberty of choice, and why you need have pitched upon Pettybaw, and brought me here, when it

is only five miles from Inchcaldy, and a lovely road besides, is more than I can understand!"

"It has not offended me, save that it chances to be Ronald Macdonald's parishthat is all."

"Certainlyyou must have heard him mention Inchcaldy; and how queer he will think it that I have come to

"We do not know `all the circumstances,'" quoted Salemina somewhat haughtily; "and you must remember,

my dear, that our opportunities for speech with Mr. Macdonald have been very rare when you were present.

For my part, I was always in such a tremor of anxiety during his visits lest one or both of you should descend

to blows that I remember no details of his conversation. Besides, we did not choose Pettybaw; we discovered

it by chance as we were driving from Strathdee to St. Rules. How were we to know that it was near this fatal

Inchcaldy? If you think it best, we will hold no communication with the place, and Mr. Macdonald need

I thought Francesca looked rather startled at this proposition. At all events she said hastily, "Oh, well, let it

go; we could not avoid each other long, anyway, although it is very awkward, of course; you see, we did not

"The matter was too unimportant for notice; and the more I think of his being here, the less I mind it after all;

and so, dull care, begone! When I first meet him on the sands or in the loaning, I shall say, `Dear me, is it Mr.

Macdonald! What brought you to our quiet hamlet?' (I shall put the responsibility on him, you know.) `That is

the worst of these small countries,fowk are aye i' the gait! When we part for ever in America, we are able

to stay parted, if we wish.' Then he will say, `Quite so, quite so; but I suppose even you, Miss Monroe, will

allow that a minister may not move his church to please a lady.' `Certainly not,' I shall reply, `especially when

it is Estaiblished!' Then he will laugh, and we shall be better friends for a few moments; and then I shall tell

him my latest story about the Scotchman who prayed, `Lord, I do not ask that Thou shouldst give me wealth;

Salemina moaned at the delightful prospect opening before us, while I went to the piano and carolled

Francesca left the room at this, and closed the door behind her with such energy that the bust of Sir Walter

rocked on the hall shelf. Running upstairs she locked herself in her bedroom, and came down again only to

In times of joy Salemina, Francesca, and I occasionally have our trifling differences of opinion, but in hours

of affliction we are as one flesh. An allwise Providence sent us Jane Grieve for fear that we should be too

happy in Pettybaw. Plans made in heaven for the discipline of sinful human flesh are always successful, and

We had sent a `machine' from the inn to meet her, and when it drew up at the door we went forward to greet

the rosy little Jane of our fancy. An aged person, wearing a rusty black bonnet and shawl, and carrying what

appeared to be a tin cakebox and a baby's bathtub, descended rheumatically from the vehicle and

announced herself as Miss Grieve. She was too old to call by her Christian name, too sensitive to call by her

surname, so Miss Grieve she remained, as announced, to the end of the chapter, and our rosy little Jane died

before she was actually born. The man took her grotesque luggage into the kitchen, and Salemina escorted

her thither, while Francesca and I fell into each other's arms and laughed hysterically.

"Nobody need tell me that she is Mrs. M'Collop's sister's husband's niece," she whispered, "although she may

"Run over to the inn, Francesca" she said, "and order bacon and eggs at eightthirty tomorrow morning.

Miss Grieve thinks we had better not breakfast at home until she becomes accustomed to the surroundings."

"She came up from Glasgow to Edinburgh for the day, and went to see Mrs. M'Collop just as our telegram

arrived. She was living with an `extremely nice family' in Glasgow, and only broke her engagement in order

to try Fifeshire air for the summer; so she will remain with us as long as she is benefited by the climate."

"How can we? She is Mrs. M'Collop's sister's husband's niece, and we intend returning to Mrs. M'Collop. She

has a nice ladylike appearance, but when she takes her bonnet off she looks seventy years old."

"She ought always to keep it off, then," returned Francesca, "for she looked eighty with it on. We shall have

to soothe her last moments, of course, and pay her funeral expenses. Did you offer her a cup of tea and show

"Yes; she said she was muckle obleeged to me, but the coals were so poor and hard she couldna batter them

up to start a fire the nicht, and she would try the boxbed to see if she could sleep in it. I am glad to

"Let there be no recriminations," I responded; "let us stand shoulder to shoulder in this calamity,isn't there

a story called Calamity Jane? We might live at the inn, and give her the cottage for a summer residence, but I

After I have once described Miss Grieve I shall not suffer her to begloom these pages as she did our young

lives. She is so exactly like her kind in America she cannot be looked upon as a national type. Everywhere we

go we see fresh, fairhaired, sonsie lasses; why should we have been visited by this affliction, we who have

She appears at the door of the kitchen with some complaint, and stands there talking to herself in a depressing

murmur until she arrives at the next grievance. Whenever we hear this, which is whenever we are in the

sittingroom, we amuse ourselves by chanting lines of melancholy poetry which correspond to the sentiments

she seems to be uttering. It is the only way the infliction can be endured, for the sittingroom is so small that

we cannot keep the door closed habitually. The effect of this plan is something like the following:

Miss Grieve's plaints never grow less, though we are sometimes at a loss for appropriate quotations to match

them. The poetic interpolations are introduced merely to show the general spirit of her conversation. They

take the place of her sighs, which are by their nature unprintable. Many times each day she is wont to sink

into one low chair, and, extending her feet in another, close her eyes and murmur undistinguishable plaints

which come to us in a kind of rhythmic way. She has such a shaking right hand we have been obliged to give

up coffee and have tea, as the former beverage became too unsettled on its journey from the kitchen to the

breakfasttable. She says she kens she is a guid cook, though salf praise is sma' racommendation (sma' as it

is she will get nae ither!); but we have little opportunity to test her skill, as she prepares only our breakfasts of

eggs and porridge. Visions of home made goodies had danced before our eyes, but as the hall clock doesna

strike she is unable to rise at any exact hour, and as the range draft is bad, and the coals too hard to batter up

That is what Peggy says to Jenny in Allan Ramsay's poem, and if you substitute `Crummylowe' for `Habbie's

You come to it by turning the corner from the inn, first passing the cottage where the lady wishes to rent two

rooms for fifteen shillings a week, but will not give much attendance, as she is slightly asthmatic, and the

house is always as clean as it is this minute, and the view from the window looking out on Pettybaw Bay

canna be surpassed at ony money. Then comes the little house where Will'am Beattie's sister Mary died in

May, and there wasna a bonnier woman in Fife. Next is the cottage with the pansygarden, where the lady in

the widow's cap takes fiveo'clock tea in the baywindow, and a snug little supper at eight. She has for the

first, scones and marmalade, and her tea is in a small black teapot under a red cosy with a white muslin cover

drawn over it. At eight she has more tea, and generally a kippered herring, or a bit of cold mutton left from

the noon dinner. We note the changes in her bill of fare as we pass hastily by, and feel admitted quite into the

family secrets. Beyond this baywindow, which is so redolent of simple peace and comfort that we long to go

in and sit down, is the cottage with the double white tulips, the cottage with the collie on the front steps, the

doctor's house with the yellow laburnum tree, and then the house where the Disagreeable Woman lives. She

has a lovely baby, which, to begin with, is somewhat remarkable, as disagreeable women rarely have babies;

or else, having had them, rapidly lose their disagreeablenessso rapidly that one has not time to notice it.

The Disagreeable Woman's house is at the end of the row, and across the road is a wicketgate leading

Where did it lead?that was the very point. Along the left, as you lean wistfully over the gate, there runs a

stone wall topped by a green hedge; and on the right, first furrows of pale fawn, then below, furrows of

deeper brown, and mulberry, and red ploughed earth stretching down to waving fields of green, and thence to

the sea, grey, misty, opalescent, melting into the pearly white clouds, so that one cannot tell where sea ends

There is a path between the green hedge and the ploughed field, and it leads seductively to the farmsteadin';

or we felt that it might thus lead, if we dared unlatch the wicket gate. Seeing no sign `Private Way,'

`Trespassers Not Allowed,' or other printed defiance to the stranger, we were considering the opening of the

gate, when we observed two female figures coming toward us along the path, and paused until they should

come through. It was the Disagreeable Woman (although we knew it not) and an elderly friend. We accosted

the friend, feeling instinctively that she was framed of softer stuff, and asked her if the path were a private

one. It was a question that had never met her ear before, and she was too dull or too discreet to deal with it on

the instant. To our amazement, she did not even manage to falter, `I couldna say.'

"It is certainly the idea to keep it a little private," said the Disagreeable Woman, coming into the conversation

"Nowhere in particular. The walk looks so inviting we should like to see the end."

"It goes only to the Farm, and you can reach that by the highroad; it is only a halfmile further. Do you wish

"Yes, I see; well, I should call it rather private." And with this she departed, leaving us to stand on the

outskirts of paradise, while she went into her house and stared at us from the window as she played with the

We found ourselves there next day, Francesca and ISalemina was too prouddrawn by an insatiable

longing to view the beloved and forbidden scene. We did not dare to glance at the Disagreeable Woman's

windows, lest our courage should ooze away, so we opened the gate and stole through into the rather private

It was a most lovely path; even if it had not been in a sense prohibited, it would still have been lovely, simply

on its own merits. There were little gaps in the hedge and the wall, through which we peered into a

daisystarred pasture, where a white bossy and a herd of flaxenhaired cows fed on the sweet green grass.

The mellow ploughed earth on the right hand stretched down to the shore line, and a ploughboy walked up

and down the long, straight furrows whistling `My Nannie's awa'.' Pettybaw is so far removed from the

musichalls that their cheap songs and strident echoes never reach its sylvan shades, and the herdladdies

We walked on and on, determined to come every day; and we settled that if we were accosted by any one, or

if our innocent business were demanded, Francesca should ask, `Does Mrs. Macstronachlacher live here, and

Soon the gates of the Farm appeared in sight. There was a cluster of buildings, with doves huddling and

cooing on the redtiled roofs,dairy houses, workmen's cottages, comely rows of haystacks (towering

yellow things with peaked tops); a little pond with ducks and geese chattering together as they paddled about,

and for additional music the trickling of two tiny burns making `a singan din,' as they wimpled through the

bushes. A specklebreasted thrush perched on a corner of the grey wall and poured his heart out. Overhead

there was a chorus of rooks in the tall trees, but there was no sound of human voice save that of the

We turned our backs on this darling solitude, and retraced our steps lingeringly. As we neared the wicket gate

again we stood upon a bit of jutting rock and peered over the wall, sniffing the hawthorn buds with ecstasy.

The white bossy drew closer, treading softly on its daisy carpet; the wondering cows looked up at us as they

peacefully chewed their cuds; a man in corduroy breeches came from a corner of the pasture, and with a

sharp, narrow hoe rooted out a thistle or two that had found their way into this sweet feedingground.

Suddenly we heard the swish of a dress behind, and turned, consciencestricken, though we had in nothing

It was an idiotic time and place for the question. We had certainly arranged that she should ask it, but

something must be left to the judgment in such cases. Francesca was hanging over a stone wall regarding a

herd of cows in a pasture, and there was no possible shelter for a Mrs. Macstronachlacher within a quarter of

a mile. What made the remark more unfortunate was the fact that, although she had on a different dress and

bonnet, the person interrogated was the Disagreeable Woman; but Francesca is particularly slow in discerning

resemblances. She would have gone on mechanically asking for newlaid eggs, had I not caught her eye and

held it sternly. The foe looked at us suspiciously for a moment (Francesca's hats are not easily forgotten), and

then vanished up the path, to tell the people at Crummylowe, I suppose, that their grounds were invested by

marauding strangers whose curiosity was manifestly the outgrowth of a republican government.

As she disappeared in one direction, we walked slowly in the other; and just as we reached the corner of the

pasture where two stone walls meet, and where a group of oaks gives grateful shade, we heard children's

"No, no!" cried somebody; "it must be still higher at this end, for the towerthis is where the king will sit.

Help me with this heavy one, Rafe. Dandie, mind your foot. Why don't you be making the flag for the

We forced our toes into the crevices of the wall and peeped stealthily over the top. Two boys of eight or ten

years, with two younger children, were busily engaged in building a castle. A great pile of stones had been

hauled to the spot, evidently for the purpose of mending the wall, and these were serving as rich material for

sport. The oldest of the company, a brighteyed, rosycheeked boy in an Eton jacket and broad white collar,

was obviously commanderinchief; and the next in size, whom he called Rafe, was a laddie of eight, in

kilts. These two looked as if they might be scions of the aristocracy, while Dandie and the Wrig were fat little

yokels of another sort. The miniature castle must have been the work of several mornings, and was worthy of

the respectful but silent admiration with which we gazed upon it; but as the last stone was placed in the tower,

the master builder looked up and spied our interested eyes peering at him over the wall. We were properly

abashed, and ducked our heads discreetly at once, but were reassured by hearing him run rapidly towards us,

"Then would you mind coming in to help us play `Sir Patrick Spens'? There aren't enough of us to do it

This confidence was touching, and luckily it was not in the least misplaced. Playing `Sir Patrick Spens' was

"Come and help?" I said. "Simply delighted! Do come, Fanny dear. How can we get over the wall?"

"I'll show you the good broken place!" cried Sir AppleCheek; and following his directions we scrambled

through, while Rafe took off his Highland bonnet ceremoniously and handed us down to earth.

"Every word of it. Don't you want us to pass an examination before you allow us in the game?"

"No," he answered gravely; "it's a great help, of course, to know it, but it isn't necessary. I keep the words in

my pocket to prompt Dandie, and the Wrig can only say two lines, she's so little." (Here he produced some

tattered leaves torn from a book of ballads.) "We've done it many a time, but this is a new Dunfermline

Castle, and we are trying the play in a different way. Rafe is the king, and Dandie is the `eldern knight,'you

"Yes, yes, that's the one! Then Rafe is Sir Patrick part of the time, and I the other part, because everybody

likes to be him; but there's nobody left for the `lords o' Noroway' or the sailors, and the Wrig is the only

maiden to sit on the shore, and she always forgets to comb her hair and weep at the right time."

The forgetful and placid Wrig (I afterwards learned that this is a Scots word for the youngest bird in the nest)

was seated on the grass, with her fat hands full of pink thyme and white wild woodruff. The sun shone on her

curly flaxen head. She wore a dark blue cotton frock with white dots, and a shortsleeved pinafore; and

though she was utterly useless from a dramatic point of view, she was the sweetest little Scotch dumpling I

ever looked upon. She had been tried and found wanting in most of the principal parts of the ballad, but when

left out of the performance altogether she was wont to scream so lustily that all Crummylowe rushed to her

"Now let us practise a bit to see if we know what we are going to do," said Sir AppleCheek. "Rafe, you can

be Sir Patrick this time. The reason why we all like to be Sir Patrick," he explained, turning to me, "is that the

and a lot of splendid things like that. Well, I'll be the king," and accordingly he began:

A dead silence ensued, whereupon the king said testily, "Now, Dandie, you never remember you're the eldern

"Now I'll write my letter," said the king, who was endeavouring to make himself comfortable in his

"I can't; I'm going to chuck up that next part. I wish you'd do Sir Patrick until it comes to `Ye lee! `ye lee!'"

"No, that won't do, Rafe. We have to mix up everybody else, but it's too bad to spoil Sir Patrick."

"Well, I'll give him to you, then, and be the king. I don't mind so much now that we've got such a good tower;

and why can't I stop up there even after the ship sets sail and look out over the sea with a telescope? That's

"You can stay till you have to come down and be a dead Scots lord. I'm not going to lie there as I did last

time, with nobody but the Wrig for a Scots lord, and her forgetting to be dead!"

Sir AppleCheek then essayed the hard part `chucked up' by Rafe. It was rather difficult, I confess, as the

"Can't we rig the ship a little better?" demanded our stagemanager at this juncture. "It isn't half as good as

Ten minutes' hard work, in which we assisted, produced something a trifle more nautical and seaworthy than

the first craft. The ground with a few boards spread upon it was the deck. Tarpaulin sheets were arranged on

sticks to represent sails, and we located the vessel so cleverly that two slender trees shot out of the middle of

"Now let us make believe that we've hoisted our sails on `Mononday morn' and been in Noroway `weeks but

We felt indeed that it had; but plucking up sufficient courage for the lords o' Noroway, we cried

We added much to the effect of this stanza by flinging ourselves on the turf and embracing Sir Patrick's

Then came a storm so terrible that I can hardly trust myself to describe its fury. The entire corps dramatique

personated the elements, and tore the gallant ship in twain, while Sir Patrick shouted in the teeth of the

I knew the words a trifle better than Francesca, and thus succeeded in forestalling her as the fortunate hero

Then we fetched a web o' the silken claith, and anither o' the twine, as our captain bade us; we wapped them

into our ship's side and letna the sea come in; but in vain, in vain. Laith were the gude Scots lords to weet

their corkheeled shune, but they did, and wat their hats abune; for the ship sank in spite of their despairing

Francesca and I were now obliged to creep from under the tarpaulins and personate the dishevelled ladies on

"Do tear your hair, Jessie! It's the only thing you have to do, and you never do it on time!"

The Wrig made ready to howl with offended pride, but we soothed her, and she tore her yellow curls with her

"Splendid! Grand!" cried Sir Patrick, as he stretched himself fifty fathoms below the imaginary surface of the

water, and gave explicit antemortem directions to the other Scots lords to spread themselves out in like

"Oh, it is grand!" he repeated jubilantly. "If I could only be the king and see it all from Dunfermline tower!

Could you be Sir Patrick once, do you think, now that I have shown you how?" he asked Francesca.

"Indeed I could!" she replied, glowing with excitement (and small wonder) at being chosen for the principal

Francesca appeared rather ashamed at her natural disqualifications for the part of Sir Patrick. "If I had only

"Oh, I have an idea!" cried the boy. "Hand her the minister's gown from the hedge, Rafe. You see, Mistress

Ogilvie of Crummylowe lent us this old gown for a sail; she's doing something to a new one, and this was her

Francesca slipped it on over her white serge, and the Pettybaw parson should have seen her with the long veil

"It seems a pity to put up your hair," said the stage manager critically, "because you look so jolly and wild

Yes, she would have Rafe's bonnet; and when she perched it on the side of her head and paced the deck

restlessly, while the black gown floated behind in the breeze, we all cheered with enthusiasm, and, having

rebuilt the ship, began the play again from the moment of the gale. The wreck was more horribly realistic

than ever, this time, because of our rehearsal; and when I crawled from under the masts and sails to seat

myself on the beach with the Wrig, I had scarcely strength enough to remove the cooky from her hand and set

When our new Sir Patrick stretched herself on the ocean bed, she fell with a despairing wail; her gown spread

like a pall over the earth, the Highland bonnet came off, and her hair floated over a haphazard pillow of

"Oh, it is fine, that part; but from here is where it always goes wrong!" cried the king from the castle tower.

"It's too bad to take the maidens away from the strand where they look so bonnie, and Rafe is splendid as the

gude sailor, but Dandie looks so silly as one little dead Scots lord; if we only had one more person, young or

This unexpected offer came from behind one of the trees that served as topmasts, and at the same moment

there issued from that delightfully secluded retreat Ronald Macdonald, in knickerbockers and a golfcap.

Suddenly as this apparition came, there was no lack of welcome on the children's part. They shouted his name

in glee, embraced his legs, and pulled him about like affectionate young bears. Confusion reigned for a

moment, while Sir Patrick rose from her sea grave all in a mist of floating hair, from which hung impromptu

"Allow me to do the honours, please, Jamie," said Mr. Macdonald, when he could escape from the children's

clutches. "Have you been properly presented? I suppose not. Ladies, the young Master of Rowardennan.

Jamie, Miss Hamilton and Miss Monroe from the United States of America." Sir AppleCheek bowed

respectfully. "Let me present the Honourable Ralph Ardmore, also from the castle, together with Dandie

Dinmont and the Wrig from Crummylowe. Sir Patrick, it is indeed a pleasure to see you again. Must you take

off my gown? I had thought it was past use, but it never looked so well before."

The counterfeit presentment of Sir Patrick vanished as the long drapery flew to the hedge whence it came,

and there remained only an offended young goddess, who swung her dark mane tempestuously to one side,

plaited it in a thick braid, tossed it back again over her white serge shoulder, and crowded on her sailor hat

"Yes, MY gown; whose else could you more appropriately borrow, pray? Mistress Ogilvie of Crummylowe

presses, sponges, and darns my bachelor wardrobe, but I confess I never suspected that she rented it out for

theatrical purposes. I have been calling upon you in Pettybaw; Lady Ardmore was there at the same time.

Finding but one of the three American Graces at home, I stayed a few moments only, and am now returning

to Inchcaldy by way of Crummylowe." Here he plucked the gown off the hedge and folded it carefully.

"Can't we keep it for a sail, Mr. Macdonald?" pleaded Jamie. "Mistress Ogilvie said it wasn't any more good."

"When Mistress Ogilvie made that remark," replied the Reverend Ronald, "she had no idea that it would ever

Francesca hung out a scarlet flag in each cheek, and I was about to say, `Don't mind me!' when he

"As I was saying, I happen to love `Sir Patrick Spens,'it is my favourite ballad; so, with your permission, I

I could never understand just why Francesca was so annoyed at being discovered in our innocent game. Of

course she was prone on Mother Earth and her tresses were much dishevelled, but she looked lovely after all,

in comparison with me, the humble `supe' and lightning change artist; yet I kept my temper,at least I kept

it until the Reverend Ronald observed, after escorting us through the gap in the wall, "By the way, Miss

Hamilton, there was a gentleman from Paris at your cottage, and he is walking down the road to meet you."

Walking down the road to meet me, forsooth! Have ministers no brains? The Reverend Mr. Macdonald had

wasted five good minutes with his observations, introductions, explanations, felicitations, and adorations, and

meantime, regardezmoi, messieurs et mesdames, s'il vous plait! I have been a Noroway dog, a shipbuilder,

and a gallant sailorman; I have been a gurly sea and a towering gale; I have crawled from beneath broken

anchors, topsails, and mizzenmasts to a strand where I have been a suffering lady plying a gowd kaim. My

skirt of blue drill has been twisted about my person until it trails in front; my collar is wilted, my cravat

untied; I have lost a stud and a sleevelink; my hair is in a tangled mass, my face is scarlet and dustyand a

Willie Beresford has come to Pettybaw, and that Arcadian village has received the last touch that makes it

We are exploring the neighbourhood together, and whichever path we take we think it lovelier than the one

before. This morning we drove to Pettybaw Sands, Francesca and Salemina following by the footpath and

meeting us on the shore. It is all so enchantingly fresh and green on one of these rare bright days: the trig lass

bleaching her `claes' on the grass by the burn near the little stone bridge; the wild partridges whirring about in

pairs; the farmboy seated on the clean straw in the bottom of his cart, and cracking his whip in mere wanton

joy at the sunshine; the pretty cottages; and the gardens with rows of currant and gooseberry bushes hanging

thick with fruit that suggests jam and tart in every delicious globule. It is a lovecoloured landscape, we

know it full well; and nothing in the fair world about us is half as beautiful as what we see in each other's

eyes. Ah, the memories of these first golden mornings together after our long separation. I shall sprinkle them

with lavender and lay them away in that dim chamber of the heart where we keep precious things. We all

know the chamber. It is fragrant with other hidden treasures, for all of them are sweet, though some are sad.

That is the reason why we put a finger on the lip and say `Hush,' if we open the door and allow any one to

We tied the pony by the wayside and alighted: Willie to gather some sprays of the pink veronica and blue

speedwell, I to sit on an old bench and watch him in happy idleness. The `whiteblossomed slaes' sweetened

the air, and the distant hills were gay with golden whin and broom, or flushed with the purplyred of the bell

We heard the note of the cushats from a neighbouring bush. They used to build their nests on the ground, so

the story goes, but the cows trampled them. Now they are wiser and build higher, and their cry is supposed to

be a derisive one, directed to their ancient enemies. `Come noo, Coo, Coo! Come noo!'

A hedgehog crept stealthily along the ground, and at a sudden sound curled himself up like a wee brown bear.

There were women working in the fields near by,a strange sight to our eyes at first, but nothing unusual

here, where many of them are employed on the farms all the year round, sowing weeding, planting, even

An old man, leaning on his staff, came tottering feebly along, and sank down on the bench beside me. He was

dirty, ragged, unkempt, and feeble, but quite sober, and pathetically anxious for human sympathy.

"I'm achtysax year auld,' he maundered, apropos of nothing, "achty sax year auld. I've seen five lairds o'

Pettybaw, sax placed meenisters, an' seeven doctors. I was a mason, an' a stoot mon i' thae days, but it's a

meeserable life noo. Wife deid, bairns deid! I sit by my lane, an' smoke my pipe, wi' naebody to gi'e me a sup

These are the sharp contrasts of life one cannot bear to face when one is young and happy. Willie gave him a

halfcrown and some tobacco for his pipe, and when the pony trotted off briskly, and we left the shrunken

figure alone on his bench as he was lonely in his life, we kissed each other and pledged ourselves to look

after him as long as we remain in Pettybaw; for what is love worth if it does not kindle the flames of spirit,

open the gates of feeling, and widen the heart to shelter all the little loves and great loves that crave

As we neared the tiny fishingvillage on the sands we met a fishwife brave in her short skirt and eight

petticoats, the basket with its two hundred pound weight on her head, and the auld wife herself knitting

placidly as she walked along. They look superbly strong, these women; but, to be sure, the `weak anes dee,'

The silvery shoals of fish no longer come so near the shore as they used in the olden time, for then the kirk

bell of St. Monan's had its tongue tied when the `draive' was off the coast, lest its knell should frighten away

We climbed the shoulder of a great green cliff until we could sit on the rugged rocks at the top and overlook

the sea. The bluff is well named Nirly Scaur, and a wild desolate spot it is, with grey lichen clad boulders

and stunted heather on its summit. In a storm here, the wind buffets and slashes and scourges one like

invisible whips, and below the sea churns itself into foaming waves, driving its `infinite squadrons of wild

white horses' eternally toward the shore. It was calm and blue today, and no sound disturbed the quiet save

the incessant shriek and scream of the rock birds, the kittiwakes, blackheaded gulls, and guillemots that live

on the sides of these high sheer craigs. Here the mother guillemot lays her single egg, and here, on these

narrow shelves of precipitous rock, she holds it in place with her foot until the warmth of her leg and

overhanging body hatches it into life, when she takes it on her back and flies down to the sea. Motherhood

under difficulties, it would seem, and the education of the baby guillemot is carried forward on Spartan

principles; for the moment he is out of the shell he is swept downward hundreds of feet and plunged into a

cold ocean, where he can sink or swim as instinct serves him. In a life so fraught with anxieties, exposures,

and dangers, it is not strange that the guillemots keeps up a ceaseless clang of excited conversation, a very

riot and wrangle of altercation and argument which the circumstances seem to warrant. The prospective

father is obliged to take turns with the prospective mother, and hold the one precious egg on the rock while

she goes for a fly, a swim, a bite, and a sup. As there are five hundred other parents on the same rock, and the

eggs look to be only a couple of inches apart, the scene must be distracting, and I have no doubt we should

find, if statistics were gathered, that thousands of guillemots die of nervous prostration.

"I am going to take my foot off. Are you ready to put yours on? Don't be clumsy! Wait a minute, I'm not

We walked among the tiny whitewashed lowroofed cots, each with its silverskinned fishes tacked

invitingly against the doorframe to dry, until we came to my favourite, the corner cottage in the row. It has

beautiful narrow garden strips in front,solid patches of colour in sweet gillyflower bushes, from which the

kindly housewife plucked a nosegay for us. Her white columbines she calls `granny's mutches'; and indeed

they are not unlike those fresh white caps. Dear Robbie Burns, ten inches high in plaster, stands in the sunny

window in a tiny box of blossoming plants surrounded by a miniature green picket fence. Outside, looming

white among the gillyflowers, is Sir Walter, and near him is still another and a larger bust on a cracked

pedestal a foot high, perhaps. We did not recognise the head at once, and asked the little woman who it was.

"Homer, the graund Greek poet," she answered cheerily; "an' I'm to have anither o' Burns, as tall as Homer,

If the shade of Homer keeps account of his earthly triumphs, I think he is proud of his place in that humble

Scotchwoman's gillyflower garden, with his head under the drooping petals of granny's white mutches.

What do you think her `mon' is called in the village! John o' Mary! But he is not alone in his meekness, for

there are Jock o' Meg, Willie o' Janet, Jem o' Tibby, and a dozen others. These primitive fishingvillages are

the places where all the advanced women ought to congregate, for the wife is head of the house; the

accountant, the treasurer, the auditor, the chancellor of the exchequer; and though her husband does catch the

fish for her to sell, that is accounted apparently as a detail too trivial for notice.

When we passed Mary's cottage on our way to the sands next day, Burns's head had been accidentally broken

off by the children, and we felt as though we had lost a friend; but Scotch thrift, and loyalty to the dear

Ploughman Poet, came to the rescue, and when we returned, Robert's plaster head had been glued to his body.

He smiled at us again from between the two scarlet geraniums, and a tendril of ivy had been gently curled

After such long, lovely mornings as this, there is a late luncheon under the shadow of a rock with Salemina

and Francesca, an idle chat, or the chapter of a book, and presently Lady Ardmore and her daughter Elizabeth

drive down to the sands. They are followed by Robin Anstruther, Jamie, and Ralph on bicycles, and before

long the stalwart figure of Ronald Macdonald appears in the distance, just in time for a cup of tea, which we

We have lived in Pettybaw a very short time, but I see that we have already made an impression upon all

grades of society. This was not our intention. We gave Edinburgh as our last place of residence, with the view

of concealing our nationality, until such time as we should choose to declare it; that is, when public

excitement with regard to our rental of the house in the loaning should have lapsed into a state of

indifference. And yet, modest, economical, and commonplace as has been the administration of our affairs,

our method of life has evidently been thought unusual, and our conduct not precisely the conduct of other

summer visitors. Even our daily purchases, in manner, in number, and in character, seem to be looked upon

as eccentric, for whenever we leave a shop, the relatives of the greengrocer, flesher, draper, whoever it may

be, bound downstairs, surround him in an eager circle, and inquire the latest news.

In an unwise moment we begged the draper's wife to honour us with a visit and explain the obliquities of the

kitchen range and the tortuosities of the sinkspout to Miss Grieve. While our landlady was on the premises,

I took occasion to invite her up to my own room, with a view of seeing whether my mattress of pebbles and

iron filings could be supplemented by another of shavings or straw, or some material less provocative of

bodily injuries. She was most sympathetic, persuasive, logical and after the manner of her kind proved to me

conclusively that the trouble lay with the toosaft occupant of the bed, not with the bed itself, and gave me

statistics with regard to the latter which established its reputation and at the same moment destroyed my own.

She looked in at the various doors casually as she passed up and down the stairs,all save that of the

diningroom, which Francesca had prudently locked to conceal the fact that we had covered the family

portraits,and I noticed at the time that her face wore an expression of mingled grief and astonishment. It

seemed to us afterward that there was a good deal more passing up and down the loaning than when we first

arrived. At dusk especially, small processions of children and young people walked by our cottage and gave

Finding Miss Grieve in an unusually amiable mood, I inquired the probable cause of this phenomenon. She

would not go so far as to give any judicial opinion, but offered a few conjectures.

It might be the tirlingpin; it might be the white satin ribbons on the curtains; it might be the guitars and

banjos; it might be the bicycle crate; it might be the profusion of plants; it might be the continual feasting and

revelry; it might be the blazing fires in a Pettybaw summer. She thought a much more likely reason, however,

was because it had become known in the village that we had moved every stick of furniture in the house out

of its accustomed place and taken the dressingtables away from the windows,'the windys,' she called

I discussed this matter fully with Mr. Macdonald later on. He laughed heartily, but confessed, with an amused

relish of his national conservatism, that to his mind there certainly was something radical, advanced, and

courageous in taking a dressing table away from its place, back to the window, and putting it anywhere else

in a room. He would be frank, he said, and acknowledge that it suggested an undisciplined and lawless habit

of thought, a disregard for authority, a lack of reverence for tradition, and a riotous and unbridled

"But why?" I asked laughingly. "The dressingtable is not a sacred object, even to a woman. Why treat it

with such veneration? Where there is but one good light, and that immediately in front of the window, there is

every excuse for the British custom, but when the light is well diffused, why not place the table whereever it

"Ah, but it doesn't look well anywhere but back to the window," said Mr. Macdonald artlessly. "It belongs

there, you see; it has probably been there since the time of Malcolm Canmore, unless Margaret was too pious

to look in a mirror. With your national love of change, you cannot conceive how soothing it is to know that

whenever you enter your gate and glance upward, you will always see the curtains parted, and between them,

like an idol in a shrine, the ugly wooden back of a little oval or oblong lookingglass. It gives one a sense of

The public interest in our doings seems to be entirely of a friendly nature, and if our neighbours find a

hundredth part of the charm and novelty in us that we find in them, they are fortunate indeed, and we

A village in Scotland is the only place I can fancy where housekeeping becomes an enthralling occupation.

All drudgery disappears in a rosy glow of unexpected, unique, and stimulating conditions. I would rather

superintend Miss Grieve, and cause the light of amazement to gleam ten times daily in her humid eye, than

lead a cotillion with Willie Beresford. I would rather do the marketing for our humble breakfasts and teas, or

talk over the day's luncheons and dinners with Mistress Brodie of the Pettybaw Inn and Posting

Salemina and Francesca do not enjoy it all quite as intensely as I, so they considerately give me the lion's

share. Every morning, after an exhilarating interview with the Niobe of our kitchen (who thinks me

irresponsible, and prays Heaven in her heart I be no worse), I put on my goloshes, take my umbrella, and

trudge up and down the little streets and lanes on real and, if need be, imaginary errands. The Duke of

Wellington said, `When fair in Scotland, always carry an umbrella; when it rains, please yourself,' and I

sometimes agree with Stevenson's shivering statement, `Life does not seem to me to be an amusement

adapted to this climate.' I quoted this to the doctor yesterday, but he remarked with some surprise that he had

not missed a day's golfing for weeks. The chemist observed as he handed me a cake of soap, `Won'erful blest

in weather, we are, mam,' simply because, the rain being unaccompanied with high wind, one was enabled to

hold up an umbrella without having it turned inside out. When it ceased dripping for an hour at noon, the

greengrocer said cheerily, `Another grand day, mam!' I assented, though I could not for the life of me

remember when the last one occurred. However, dreary as the weather may be, one cannot be dull when

doing one's morning round of shopping in Pettybaw or Strathdee. I have only to give you thumbnail

We bought our first groceries of Mrs. Robert Phin, of Strathdee, simply because she is an inimitable

conversationalist. She is expansive, too, about family matters, and tells us certain of her `mon's' faults which

Rab takes a wee drappie too much, it appears, and takes it so often that he has little time to earn an honest

penny for his family. This is bad enough; but the fact that Mrs. Phin has been twice wed before, and that in

each case she innocently chose a ne'erdoweel for a mate, makes her a trifle cynical. She told me that she

had laid twa husbands in the kirkyard near which her little shop stands, and added cheerfully, as I made

Salemina objects to the shop because it is so disorderly. Soap and sugar, tea and bloaters, starch and gingham,

lead pencils and sausages, lie side by side cosily. Boxes of pins are kept on top of kegs of herrings. Tins of

coffee are distributed impartially anywhere and everywhere, and the bacon sometimes reposes in a glass case

Alexander is one of a brood, or perhaps I should say three broods, of children which wander among the

barrels and boxes and hams and winceys seeking what they may devour,a handful of sugar, a prune, or a

We often see the bairns at their luncheon or dinner in a little room just off the shop, Alexander the Small

always sitting or kneeling on a `creepie,' holding his plate down firmly with the left hand and eating with the

right, whether the food be fish, porridge, or broth. In the Phin family the person who does not hold his plate

down runs the risk of losing it to one of the other children or to the dogs, who, with eager eye and reminding

I enjoy these scenes very much, but, alas! I can no longer witness them as often as formerly.

"Maybe ye'll no' ken me," she said, her usually clear speech a little blurred. "It's the teeth. I've mislaid `em

somewhere. I paid far too much siller for `em to wear `em ilka day. Sometimes I rest `em in the teabox to

keep `em awa' frae the bairns, but I canna find `em theer. I'm thinkin' maybe they'll be in the rice, but I've

This anecdote was too rich to keep to myself, but its unconscious humour made no impression upon

Salemina, who insisted upon the withdrawal of our patronage. I have tried to persuade her that, whatever may

The kirkyard where Rab's two predecessors have been laid, and where Rab will lie when Mrs. Phin has

`boxed' him, is a sleepy little place set on a gentle slope of ground, softly shaded by willow and yew trees. It

is enclosed by a stone wall, into which an occasional ancient tombstone is built, its name and date almost

We often walk through its quiet, myrtlebordered paths on our way to the other end of the village, where

Mrs. Bruce, the flesher, keeps an unrivalled assortment of beef and mutton. The headstones, many of them

laid flat upon the graves, are interesting to us because of their quaint inscriptions, in which the occupation of

the deceased is often stated with modest pride and candour. One expects to see the achievements of the

soldier, the sailor, or the statesman carved in the stone that marks his restingplace, but to our eyes it is

strange enough to read that the subject of eulogy was a plumber, tobacconist, maker of golfballs, or a golf

champion; in which latter case there is a spirited etching or basrelief of the dead hero, with knickerbockers,

There, too, lies Thomas Loughead, Hairdresser, a profession far too little celebrated in song and story. His

the inference being, to one who knows a line of Scripture, that in his death he was not divided.

These kirkyard personalities almost lead one to believe in the authenticity of the British tradesman's epitaph,

wherein his practicalminded relict stated that the `bereaved widow would continue to carry on the tripe and

One day when we were walking through the little village of Strathdee we turned the corner of a quiet side

A stone cottage of the everyday sort stood a trifle back from the road and bore over its front door a sign

announcing that Mrs. Bruce, Flesher, carried on her business within; and indeed one could look through the

windows and see ruddy joints hanging from beams, and piles of pinkandwhite steaks and chops lying

neatly on the counter, crying, `Come, eat me!' Nevertheless, one's first glance would be arrested neither by

Mrs Bruce's blackandgold sign, nor by the enticements of her stockintrade, because one's attention is

rapped squarely between the eyes by an astonishing shape that arises from the patch of lawn in front of the

cottage, and completely dominates the scene. Imagine yourself face to face with the last thing you would

expect to see in a modest front dooryard,the figurehead of a ship, heroic in size, gorgeous in colour,

majestic in pose! A female personage it appears to be from the drapery, which is the only key the artist

furnishes as to sex, and a queenly female withal, for she wears a crown at least a foot high, and brandishes a

forbidding sceptre. All this seen from the front, but the rear view discloses the fact that the lady terminates in

the tail of a fish which wriggles artistically in midair and is of a brittle sort, as it has evidently been thrice

Mrs Bruce did not leave us long in suspense, but obligingly came out, partly to comment on the low price of

mutton and partly to tell the tale of the mammoth mermaid. By rights, of course, Mrs. Bruce's husband should

have been the gallant captain of a bark which foundered at sea and sent every man to his grave on the

oceanbed. The ship's figurehead should have been discovered by some miracle, brought to the sorrowing

widow, and set up in the garden in eternal remembrance of the dear departed. This was the story in my mind,

but as a matter of fact the rude effigy was wrought by Mrs. Bruce's father for a ship to be called the Sea

Queen, but by some mischance, ship and figurehead never came together, and the old woodcarver left it to

his daughter, in lieu of other property. It has not been wholly unproductive, Mrs. Bruce fancies, for the casual

passersby, like those who came to scoff and remained to pray, go into the shop to ask questions about the

On our way to the bakery, which is a daily walk with us, we always glance at a little cot in a grassy lane just

off the fore street. In one half of this humble dwelling Mrs. Davidson keeps a slender stock of shopworn

articles,pins, needles, threads, sealingwax, pencils, and sweeties for the children, all disposed attractively

Across the passage, close to the other window, sits day after day an old woman of eightsix summers who

has lost her kinship with the present and gone back to dwell for ever in the past. A small table stands in front

of her rushbottomed chair, the old family Bible rests upon it, and in front of the Bible are always four tiny

dolls, with which the trembling old fingers play from morning till night. They are cheap, common little

puppets, but she robes and disrobes them with tenderest care. They are put to bed upon the Bible, take their

walks along its timeworn pages, are married on it, buried on it, and the direst punishment they ever receive

is to be removed from its sacred covers and temporarily hidden beneath the dear old soul's black alpaca

apron. She is quite happy with her treasures on weekdays; but on Sundaysalas and alas! the poor old

dame sits in her lonely chair with the furtive tears dropping on her wrinkled cheeks, for it is a Godfearing

household, and it is neither lawful nor seemly to play with dolls on the Sawbath!

Mrs. Nicolson is the presiding genius of the bakery, she is more she is the bakery itself. A Mr. Nicolson

there is, and he is known to be the baker, but he dwells in the regions below the shop and only issues at rare

intervals, beneath the friendly shelter of a huge tin tray filled with scones and baps.

If you saw Mrs. Nicolson's kitchen with the firelight gleaming on its bright copper, its polished candlesticks,

and its snowy floor, you would think her an admirable housewife, but you would get no clue to those shrewd

and masterful traits of character which reveal themselves chiefly behind the counter.

Miss Grieve had purchased of Mrs. Nicolson a quarter section of very appetising gingercake to eat with our

afternoon tea, and I stepped in to buy more. She showed me a large round loaf for two shillings.

"No," I objected, "I cannot use a whole loaf, thank you. We eat very little at a time, and like it perfectly fresh.

Then ensued a discourse which I cannot render in the vernacular, more's the pity, though I understood it all

too well for my comfort. The substance of it was this: that she couldna and wouldna tak' it in hand to give me

a quarter section of cake when the other three quarters might gae dry in the bakery; that the reason she sold

the small piece on the former occasion was that her daughter, her son inlaw, and their three children came

from Ballahoolish to visit her, and she gave them a high tea with no expense spared; that at this function they

devoured threefourths of a gingercake, and just as she was mournfully regarding the remainder my servant

came in and took it off her hands; that she had kept a bakery for thirty years and her mother before her, and

never had a twoshilling gingercake been sold in pieces before, nor was it likely ever to occur again; that if

I, under Providence, so to speak, had been the fortunate gainer by the transaction, why not eat my six

pennyworth in solemn gratitude once for all, and not expect a like miracle to happen the next week? And

finally, that twoshilling gingercakes were, in the very nature of things, designed for large families; and it

was the part of wisdom for small families to fix their affections on something else, for she couldna and

wouldna tak' it in hand to cut a rare and expensive article for a small customer.

The torrent of logic was over, and I said humbly that I would take the whole loaf.

"Verra weel, mam," she responded more affably, "thank you kindly; no, I couldna tak' it in hand to sell six

pennyworth of that ginger cake and let oneandsixpence worth gae dry in the bakery.A beautiful day,

mam! Won'erful blest in weather ye are! Let me open your umbrella for you, mam!"

David Robb is the weaver of Pettybaw. All day long he sits at his oldfashioned handloom, which, like the

fruit of his toil and the dear old greybeard himself, belongs to a day that is past and gone.

He might have work enough to keep an apprentice busy, but where would he find a lad sufficiently behind the

times to learn a humble trade now banished to the limbo of superseded, almost forgotten things?

His home is but a poor place, but the rough room in which he works is big enough to hold a deal of sweet

content. It is cheery enough, too, to attract the Pettybaw weans, who steal in on wet days and sit on the floor

playing with the thrums, or with bits of coloured ravellings. Sometimes when they have proved themselves

wise and prudent little virgins, they are even allowed to touch the hanks of pink and yellow and blue yarn that

All this time the `heddles' go up and down, up and down, with their ceaseless clatter, and David throws the

We have grown to be good friends, David and I, and I have been permitted the signal honour of painting him

The loom stands by an eastern window, and the rare Pettybaw sunshine filters through the branches of a tree,

shines upon the dusty windowpanes, and throws a halo round David's head that he well deserves and little

suspects. In my foreground sit Meg and Jean and Elspeth playing with thrums and wearing the fruit of

David's loom in their gingham frocks. David himself sits on his wooden bench behind the maze of cords that

The snows of seventy winters powder his hair and beard. His spectacles are often pushed back on his kindly

brow, but no glass could wholly obscure the clear integrity and steadfast purity of his eyes; and as for his

smile, I have not the art to paint that! It holds in solution so many sweet though humble virtues of patience,

temperance, selfdenial, honest endeavour, that my brush falters in the attempt to fix the radiant whole upon

the canvas. Fashions come and go, modern improvements transform the arts and trades, manual skill gives

way to the cunning of the machine, but old David Robb, after more than fifty years of toil, still sits at his

David has small booklearning, so he tells me; and indeed he had need to tell me, for I should never have

discovered it myself,one misses it so little when the larger things are all present!

A certain summer visitor in Pettybaw (a compatriot of ours, by the way) bought a quantity of David's

orangecoloured wincey, and finding that it wore like iron, wished to order more. She used the word

`reproduce' in her telegram, as there was one pattern and one colour she specially liked. Perhaps the context

was not illuminating, but at any rate the word `reproduce' was not in David's vocabulary, and putting back his

spectacles he told me his difficulty in deciphering the exact meaning of his finelady patron. He called at the

Free Kirk manse,the meenister was no' at hame; then to the library,it was closed; then to the

Estaiblished manse,the meenister was awa'. At last he obtained a glance at the schoolmaster's dictionary,

and turning to `reproduce' found that it meant `nought but mak' ower again';and with an amused smile at

the bedevilments of language he turned once more to his loom and I to my canvas.

Notwithstanding his unfamiliarity with `langnebbit' words, David has absorbed a deal of wisdom in his quiet

life; though so far as I can see, his only books have been the green tree outside his window, a glimpse of the

But I sometimes question if as many scholars are not made as marred in this wise, forto the seeing

eyethe waving leaf and the far sea, the daily task, one's own heartbeats, and one's neighbour's, these

teach us in good time to interpret Nature's secrets, and man's, and God's as well.

Tea at Rowardennan Castle is an impressive and a delightful function. It is served by a ministeriallooking

butler and a just readytobeordained footman. They both look as if they had been nourished on the

ThirtyNine Articles, but they know their business as well as if they had been trained in heathen

lands,which is saying a good deal, for everybody knows that heathen servants wait upon one with

idolatrous solicitude. However, from the quality of the cheering beverage itself down to the thickness of the

cream, the thinness of the china, the crispness of the toast, and the plummyness of the cake, tea at

The scones are of unusual lightness, also. I should think they would scarcely weigh more than four, perhaps

even five, to a pound; but I am aware that the casual traveller, who eats only at hotels, and never has the

privilege of entering feudal castles, will be slow to believe this estimate, particularly just after breakfast.

Salemina always describes a Scotch scone as an aspiring but unsuccessful sodabiscuit of the New England

sort. Stevenson, in writing of that dense black substance, inimical to life, called Scotch bun, says that the

patriotism that leads a Scotsman to eat it will hardly desert him in any emergency. Salemina thinks that the

scone should be bracketed with the bun (in description, of course, never in the human stomach), and says

that, as a matter of fact, `th' unconquer'd Scot' of old was not only clad in a shirt of mail, but well fortified

within when he went forth to warfare after a meal of oatmeal and scones. She insists that the spear which

would pierce the shirt of mail would be turned aside and blunted by the ordinary scone of commerce; but

Considering the air of liberal hospitality that hangs about the castle teatable, I wonder that our friends do not

oftener avail themselves of its privileges and allow us to do so; but on all dark, foggy, or inclement days, or

whenever they tire of the sands, everybody persists in taking tea at BideaWee Cottage.

We buy our tea of the Pettybaw grocer, some of our cups are cracked, the teapot is of earthenware, Miss

Grieve disapproves of all social teafuddles, and shows it plainly when she brings in the tray, and the room is

so small that some of us overflow into the hall or the garden; it matters not; there is some fatal charm in our

humble hospitality. At four o'clock one of us is obliged to be, like Sister Anne, on the housetop; and if

company approaches, she must descend and speed to the plumber's for six pennyworth extra of cream. In

most wellordered British households Miss Grieve would be requested to do this speeding, but both her mind

and her body move too slowly for such domestic crises; and then, too, her temper has to be kept as unruffled

as possible, so that she will cut the bread and butter thin. This she generally does if she has not been `fair

dounhadden wi' wark'; but the washing of her own spinster cup and plate, together with the incident sighs

and groans, occupies her till so late an hour that she is not always dressed for callers.

Willie and I were reading The Lady of the Lake the other day, in the back garden, surrounded by the verdant

leafage of our own kaleyard. It is a pretty spot when the sun shines, a trifle domestic in its air, perhaps, but

restful: Miss Grieve's dishtowels and aprons drying on the currant bushes, the cat playing with a

muttonbone or a fishtail on the grass, and the little birds perching on the rims of our washboiler and

waterbuckets. It can be reached only by way of the kitchen, which somewhat lessens its value as a pleasure

ground or a rustic retreat, but Willie and I retire there now and then for a quiet chat.

On this particular occasion Willie was declaiming the exciting verses where FitzJames and Murdoch are

"It was indeed," said Francesca, appearing suddenly at an upper window overhanging the garden. "Pardon

this intrusion, but the Castle people are here," she continued in what is known as a stage whisper,that is,

one that can be easily heard by a thousand persons,"the Castle people and the ladies from Pettybaw House;

and Mr. Macdonald is coming down the loaning; but Calamity Jane is making her toilet in the kitchen, and

you cannot take Mr. Beresford through into the sittingroom at present. She says this hoose has so few

"How long will she be?" queried Mr. Beresford anxiously, putting The Lady of the Lake in his pocket, and

"She has just begun. Whatever you do, don't unsettle her temper, for she will have to prepare for eight

today. I will send Mr. Macdonald and Miss Macrae to the bakery for gingerbread, to gain time, and possibly

I can think of a way to rescue you. If I can't, are you tolerably comfortable? Perhaps Miss Grieve won't mind

Penelope, and she can come through the kitchen any time and join us; but naturally you don't want to be

separated, that's the worst of being engaged. Of course I can lower your tea in a tin bucket, and if it should

rain I can throw out umbrellas. Would you like your golfcaps, Pen? `Won'erful blest in weather ye are,

mam!' The situation is not so bad as it might be," she added consolingly, "because in case Miss Grieve's toilet

should last longer than usual, your wedding need not be indefinitely postponed, for Mr. Macdonald can marry

Here she disappeared, and we had scarcely time to take in the full humour of the affair before Robin

Anstruther's laughing eyes appeared over the top of the high brick wall that protects our garden on three

"Do not shoot," said he. "I am not come to steal the fruit, but to succour humanity in distress. Miss Monroe

insisted that I should borrow the inn ladder. She thought a rescue would be much more romantic than waiting

for Miss Grieve. Everybody is coming out to witness it, at least all your guests,there are no strangers

present,and Miss Monroe is already collecting sixpence a head for the entertainment, to be given, she says,

He was now astride of the wall, and speedily lifted the ladder to our side, where it leaned comfortably against

the stout branches of the draper's peach vine. Willie ran nimbly up the ladder and bestrode the wall. I

followed, first standing, and then decorously sitting down on the top of it. Mr. Anstruther pulled up the

ladder, and replaced it on the side of liberty; then he descended, then Willie, and I last of all, amidst the

When Miss Grieve formally entered the sittingroom bearing the tea tray, she was buskit braw in black stuff

gown, clean apron, and fresh cap trimmed with purple ribbons, under which her white locks were neatly

She deplored the coolness of the tea, but accounted for it to me in an aside by the sickening quality of Mrs.

Sinkler's coals and Mr. Macbrose's kindlingwood, to say nothing of the insulting draft in the draper's range.

When she left the room, I suppose she was unable to explain the peals of laughter that rang through our

Lady Ardmore insists that the rescue was the most unique episode she ever witnessed, and says that she never

understood America until she made our acquaintance. I persuaded her that this was fallacious reasoning; that

while she might understand us by knowing America, she could not possibly reverse this mental operation and

be sure of the result. The ladies of Pettybaw House said that the occurrence was as Fifish as anything that

ever happened in Fife. The kingdom of Fife is noted, it seems, for its `doocots [dovecots] and its daft lairds,'

and to be eccentric and Fifish are one and the same thing. Thereupon Francesca told Mr. Macdonald a story

she heard in Edinburgh, to the effect that when a certain committee or council was quarrelling as to which of

certain Fifeshire towns should be the seat of a projected lunatic asylum, a new resident arose and suggested

that the building of a wall round the kingdom of Fife would solve the difficulty, settle all disputes, and give

This is the sort of tale that a native can tell with a genial chuckle, but it comes with poor grace from an

American lady sojourning in Fife. Francesca does not mind this, however, as she is at present avenging fresh

"I got acquainted with an American girl in rather a queer sort of way," he said, between cups. "It was in

London, on the Duke of York's weddingday. I'm rather a tall chap, you see, and in the crowd somebody

touched me on the shoulder, and a plaintive voice behind me said, `You're such a big man, and I am so little,

will you please help me to save my life? My mother was separated from me in the crowd somewhere as we

were trying to reach the Berkeley, and I don't know what to do.' I was a trifle nonplussed, but I did the best I

could. She was a tiny thing, in a marvellous frock and a flowery hat and a silver girdle and chatelaine. In

another minute she spied a second man, an officer, a full head taller than I am, broad shoulders, splendidly

put up altogether. Bless me! if she didn't turn to him and say, `Oh, you're so nice and big, you're even bigger

than this other gentleman, and I need you both in this dreadful crush. If you'll be good enough to stand on

either side of me, I shall be awfully obliged.' We exchanged amused glances of embarrassment over her

blonde head, but there was no resisting the irresistible. She was a small person, but she had the soul of a

general, and we obeyed orders. We stood guard over her little ladyship for nearly an hour, and I must say she

entertained us thoroughly, for she was as clever as she was pretty. Then I got her a seat in one of the windows

of my club, while the other man, armed with a full description, went out to hunt up the mother; and, by Jove!

he found her, too. She would have her mother, and her mother she had. They were awfully jolly people; they

came to luncheon in my chambers at the Albany afterwards, and we grew to be great friends."

"I dare say she was an English girl masquerading," I remarked facetiously. "What made you think her an

"Probably she didn't say Barkley," observed Francesca cuttingly; "she would have been sure to commit that

"Certainly not; we never call them the States, and with us clerk spells clerk, and Berk Berk."

"No odder than you saying Bark, and not half as odd as your calling it Albany," I interpolated, to help

"Penelope and I always call it Allbany," responded Francesca nonsensically, "but Salemina, who has been

This anecdote was the signal for Miss Ardmore to remark (apropos of her own discrimination and the

American accent) that hearing a lady ask for a certain med'cine in a chemist's shop, she noted the intonation,

and inquired of the chemist, when the fair stranger had retired, if she were not an American. "And she was!"

exclaimed the Honourable Elizabeth triumphantly. "And what makes it the more curious, she had been over

In avenging fancied insults, it is certainly more just to heap punishment on the head of the real offender than

upon his neighbour, and it is a trifle difficult to decide why Francesca should chastise Mr. Macdonald for the

goodhumoured sins of Mr. Anstruther and Miss Ardmore; yet she does so, nevertheless.

The history of these chastisements she recounts in the nightly half hour which she spends with me when I

am endeavouring to compose myself for sleep. Francesca is fluent at all times, but once seated on the foot of

"Oh, today's argument with Mr. Macdonald. It was a literary quarrel this afternoon."

"There is a good deal of nonsense in that old saw," she interrupted; "at all events, the most foolish fools I

have ever known stayed still and didn't do anything. Rushing shows a certain movement of the mind, even if

it is in the wrong direction. However, Mr. Macdonald is both opinionated and dogmatic, but his worst enemy

"Don't you suppose I know to whom you alluded, dear? Is not your style so simple, frank, and direct that a

wayfaring girl can read it and not err therein? No, I am not sitting on your feet, and it is not time to go to

sleep; I wonder you do not tire of making those futile protests. As a matter of fact, we began this literary

discussion yesterday morning, but were interrupted; and knowing that it was sure to come up again, I

prepared for it with Salemina. She furnished the ammunition, so to speak, and I fired the guns."

"You always make so much noise with blank cartridges I wonder you ever bother about real shot," I

"Penelope, how can you abuse me when I am in trouble? Well, Mr. Macdonald was prating, as usual, about

the antiquity of Scotland and its aeons of stirring history. I am so weary of the venerableness of this country.

How old will it have to be, I wonder, before it gets used to it? If it's the province of art to conceal art, it ought

to be the province of age to conceal age, and it generally is. `Everything doesn't improve with years,' I

"Of course you know how that question affected me! How I do dislike an appetite for specific details! It is

simply paralysing to a good conversation. Do you remember that silly game in which some one points a stick

at you and says, `Beast, bird, or fish,BEAST!' and you have to name one while he counts ten? If a beast

has been requested, you can think of one fish and two birds, but no beast. If he says `FISH,' all the beasts in

the universe stalk through your memory, but not one finny, sealy, swimming thing! Well, that is the effect of

`For instance?' on my faculties. So I stumbled a bit, and succeeded in recalling, as objects which do not

improve with age, mushrooms, women, and chickens, and he was obliged to agree with me, which nearly

killed him. Then I said that although America is so fresh and blooming that people persist in calling it young,

it is much older than it appears to the superficial eye. There is no real propriety in dating us as a nation from

the Declaration of Independence in 1776, I said, nor even from the landing of the Pilgrims in 1620; nor, for

that matter, from Columbus's discovery in 1492. It's my opinion, I asserted, that some of us had been there

thousands of years before, but nobody had had the sense to discover us. We couldn't discover

ourselves,though if we could have foreseen how the sere and yellow nations of the earth would taunt us

"That theory must have been very convincing to the philosophic Scots mind," I interjected.

"It was; even Mr. Macdonald thought it ingenious. `And so,' I went on, `we were alive and awake and

beginning to make history when you Scots were only barelegged savages roaming over the hills and stealing

cattle. It was a very bad habit of yours, that cattle stealing, and one which you kept up too long.'

"'Oh yes,' I answered, `because it was a smaller one! Yours was a vice, and ours a sin; or I mean it would

have been a sin had we done it; but in reality we didn't steal land; we just TOOK it, reserving plenty for the

Indians to play about on; and for every hunting ground we took away we gave them in exchange a

serviceable plough, or a school, or a nice Indian agent, or something. That was land grabbing, if you like,

but it is a habit you Britishers have still, while we gave it up when we reached years of discretion.'"

"This is very illuminating," I interrupted, now thoroughly wide awake, "but it isn't my idea of a literary

"I am coming to that," she responded. "It was just at this point that, goaded into secret fury by my innocent

speech about cattle stealing, he began to belittle American literature, the poetry especially. Of course he

waxed eloquent about the royal line of poetkings that had made his country famous, and said the people

who could claim Shakespeare had reason to be the proudest nation on earth. `Doubtless,' I said. `But do you

mean to say that Scotland has any nearer claim upon Shakespeare than we have? I do not now allude to the

fact that in the large sense he is the common property of the Englishspeaking world' (Salemina told me to

say that), `but Shakespeare died in 1616, and the union of Scotland with England didn't come about till 1707,

nearly a century afterwards. You really haven't anything to do with him! But as for us, we didn't leave

England until 1620, when Shakespeare had been perfectly dead four years. We took very good care not to

come away too soon. Chaucer and Spenser were dead too, and we had nothing to stay for!'"

I was obliged to relax here and give vent to a burst of merriment at Francesca's absurdities.

"I could see that he had never regarded the matter in that light before," she went on gaily, encouraged by my

laughter, "but he braced himself for the conflict, and said `I wonder that you didn't stay a little longer while

you were about it. Milton and Ben Jonson were still alive; Bacon's Novum Organum was just coming out;

and in thirty or forty years you could have had L'Allegro, Il Penseroso and Paradise Lost; Newton's Principia,

too, in 1687. Perhaps these were all too serious and heavy for your national taste; still one sometimes likes to

claim things one cannot fully appreciate. And then, too, if you had once begun to stay, waiting for the great

things to happen and the great books to be written, you would never have gone, for there would still have

"'If we couldn't stay to see out your great bards, we certainly couldn't afford to remain and welcome your

minor ones,' I answered frigidly; `but we wanted to be well out of the way before England united with

Scotland, knowing that if we were uncomfortable as things were, it would be a good deal worse after the

Union; and we had to come home anyway, and start our own poets. Emerson, Whittier, Longfellow, Holmes,

"'I suppose they had to be if you had set your mind on it,' he said, `though personally I could have spared one

"'Very probably,' I remarked, as thoroughly angry now as he intended I should be. `We cannot expect you to

appreciate all the American poets; indeed, you cannot appreciate all of your own, for the same nation doesn't

always furnish the writers and the readers. Take your precious Browning, for example! There are hundreds of

"'No,' he retorted, `I dare say; but there is a good deal in belonging to a people who can understand him

"O Francesca!" I exclaimed, sitting bolt upright among my pillows. "How could you give him that chance!

"I said nothing," she replied mysteriously. "I did something much more to the point,I cried!"

"Yes, cried; not rivers and freshets of woe, but small brooks and streamlets of helpless mortification."

"There are some things too dreadful to describe," she answered, and wrapping her Italian blanket majestically

about her she retired to her own apartment, shooting one enigmatical glance at me as she closed the door.

That glance puzzled me for some time after she left the room. It was as expressive and interesting a beam as

ever darted from a woman's eye. The combination of elements involved in it, if an abstract thing may be

Onehalf, mystery. Oneeighth, triumph. Oneeighth, amusement. Onesixteenth, pride. Onesixteenth,

And all these delicate, complex emotions played together in a circle of arching eyebrow, curving lip, and

tremulous chin,played together, mingling and melting into one another like fire and snow; bewildering,

It rained in torrents; Salemina was darning stockings in the inglenook at BideaWee Cottage, and I was

reading her a Scotch letter which Francesca and I had concocted the evening before. I proposed sending the

document to certain chosen spirits in our own country, who were pleased to be facetious concerning our

devotion to Scotland. It contained, in sooth, little that was new, and still less that was true, for we were

confined to a very small vocabulary which we were obliged to supplement now and then by a dip into Burns

Mony's the time I hae ettled to send ye a screed, but there was aye something that cam' i' the gait. It wisna

that I couldna be fashed, for aften hae I thocht o' ye and my hairt has been wi' ye mony's the day. There's no'

muckle fowk frae Ameriky hereawa; they're a' jist Fife bodies, and a lass canna get her tongue roun' their

thrapple taxin' words ava', so it's like I may een drap a' the sweetness o' my good mithertongue.

`Tis a dulefu' nicht, and an awfu' blash is ragin' wi'oot. Fanny's awa' at the gowff rinnin' aboot wi' a bag o'

sticks after a wee bit ba', and Sally and I are hame by oor lane. Laith will the lassie be to weet her bonny

shoon, but lang ere the play'll be ower she'll wat her hat aboon. A gust o' win' is skirlin' the noo, and as we

luik ower the faem, the haar is risin', weetin' the green swaird wi' misty shoo'rs.

Yestreen was a calm simmer gloamin', sae sweet an' bonnie that when the sun was sinkin' doon ower

Pettybaw Sands we daundered ower the muir. As we cam' through the scented birks, we saw a trottin' burnie

wimplin' `neath the whiteblossomed slaes and hirplin' doon the hillside; an' while a herdladdie lilted ower

the fernie brae, a cushat cooed leesomely doon i' the dale. We pit aff oor shoon, sae blithe were we, kilted oor

coats a little aboon the knee, and paidilt i' the burn, gettin' geyan weet the while. Then Sally pu'd the gowans

wat wi' dew an' twined her bree wi' tasselled broom, while I had a wee crackie wi' Tibby Buchan, the flesher's

dochter frae Auld Reekie. Tibby's nae giglet gawky like the lave, ye ken, she's a sonsie maid, as sweet as

We were unco gleg to win hame when a' this was dune, an' after steekin' the door, to sit an' birsle oor taes at

the bit blaze. Mickle thocht we o' the gentles ayont the sea, an' sair grat we for a' frien's we kent lang syne in

Late at nicht, Fanny, the bonny gypsy, cam' ben the hoose an' tirled at the pin of oor bigly bower door,

"Hoots, lassie!" cried oot Sally, "th' auld carline i' the kitchen is i' her boxbed, an' weel aneuch ye ken is

"Oo ay!" said Fanny, strikin' her curly pow, "then fetch me parritch, an' dinna be lang wi' them, for I've lickit

a Pettybaw lad at the gowff, an' I could eat twa guid jints o' beef gin I had them!"

"Losh girl," said I, "gie ower makin' sic a mickle din. Ye ken verra weel ye'll get nae parritch the nicht. I'll rin

"Blethers an' havers!" cried Fanny, but she blinkit bonnily the while, an' when the tea was weel maskit, she

smoored her wrath an' stappit her mooth wi' a bit o' oaten cake. We aye keep that i' the hoose, for th' auld

servantbody is geyan bad at the cookin', an' she's sae dour an' dowie that to speak but till her we daur hardly

In sic divairsions pass the lang simmer days in braid Scotland, but I canna write mair the nicht, for `tis the

Like th' auld wife's parrot, `we dinna speak muckle, but we're deevils to think,' an' we're aye thinkin' aboot ye.

An' noo I maun leave ye to mak' what ye can oot o' this, for I jalouse it'll pass ye to untaukle the whole

"It may be very fine," remarked Salemina judicially, "though I cannot understand more than half of it."

"That would also be true of Browning," I replied. "Don't you love to see great ideas looming through a mist

"The words are misty enough in this case," she said, "and I do wish you would not tell the world that I paddle

in the burn, or `twine my bree wi' tasselled broom.' I'm too old to be made ridiculous."

"Nobody will believe it," said Francesca, appearing in the doorway. "They will know it is only Penelope's

havering," and with this undeserved scoff, she took her mashie and went golfingnot on the links, on this

occasion, but in our microscopic sittingroom. It is twelve feet square, and holds a tiny piano, desk,

centretable, sofa, and chairs, but the spot between the fireplace and the table is Francesca's favourite

`puttinggreen.' She wishes to become more deadly in the matter of approaches, and thinks her teeshots

weak; so these two deficiencies she is trying to make good by home practice in inclement weather. She turns

a tumbler on its side on the floor, and `putts' the ball into it, or at it, as the case may be, from the opposite side

of the room. It is excellent discipline, and as the tumblers are inexpensive the breakage really does not matter.

Whenever Miss Grieve hears the shivering of glass, she murmurs, not without reason, `It is not for the

"Penelope, has it ever occurred to you that Elizabeth Ardmore is seriously interested in Mr. Macdonald?"

Salemina propounded this question to me with the same innocence that a babe would display in placing a

Francesca naturally heard the remark,although it was addressed to me,pricked up her ears, and missed

It was a simple inquiry, but as I look back upon it from the safe ground of subsequent knowledge I perceive

that it had a certain amount of influence upon Francesca's history. The suggestion would have carried no

weight with me for two reasons. In the first place, Salemina is farsighted. If objects are located at some

distance from her, she sees them clearly; but if they are under her very nose she overlooks them altogether,

unless they are sufficiently fragrant or audible to address other senses. This physical peculiarity she carries

over into her mental processes. Her impression of the Disruption movement, for example, would be lively

and distinct, but her perception of a contemporary lover's quarrel (particularly if it were fought at her own

apronstrings) would be singularly vague. If she suggested, therefore, that Elizabeth Ardmore was interested

in Mr. Beresford, who is the rightful captive of my bow and spear, I should be perfectly calm.

My second reason for comfortable indifference is that frequently in novels, and always in plays, the heroine is

instigated to violent jealousy by insinuations of this sort, usually conveyed by the villain of the piece, male or

female. I have seen this happen so often in the modern drama that it has long since ceased to be convincing;

but though Francesca has witnessed scores of plays and read hundreds of novels, it did not apparently strike

her as a theatrical or literary suggestion that Lady Ardmore's daughter should be in love with Mr. Macdonald.

The effect of the new point of view was most salutary, on the whole. She had come to think herself the only

prominent figure in the Reverend Ronald's landscape, and anything more impertinent than her tone with him

(unless it is his with her) I certainly never heard. This criticism, however, relates only to their public

performances, and I have long suspected that their private conversations are of a kindlier character. When it

occurred to her that he might simply be sharpening his mental sword on her steel, but that his heart had at last

wandered into a more genial climate than she had ever provided for it, she softened unconsciously; the

Scotsman and the American receded into a truer perspective, and the man and the woman approached each

"What shall we do if Francesca and Mr. Macdonald really fall in love with each other?" asked Salemina,

when Francesca had gone into the hall to try long drives. (There is a good deal of excitement in this, as Miss

Grieve has to cross the passage on her way from the kitchen to the chinacloset, and thus often serves as a

"Nonsense, don't be captious! It can't be too late yet. They have known each other only a little over two

"It depends upon what you expect to accomplish. If you wish to stop the marriage, interfere in a fortnight or

so; if you wish to prevent an engagement, speakwell, say tomorrow; if, however, you didn't wish them to

fall in love with each other, you should have kept one of them away from Lady Baird's dinner."

"I could have waited a trifle longer than that," argued Salemina, "for you remember how badly they got on at

"I remember you thought so," I responded dryly; "but I believe Mr. Macdonald has been interested in

Francesca from the outset, partly because her beauty and vivacity attracted him, partly because he could keep

her in order only by putting his whole mind upon her. On his side, he has succeeded in piquing her into

thinking of him continually, though solely, as she fancies, for the purpose of crossing swords with him. If

they ever drop their weapons for an instant, and allow the din of warfare to subside so that they can listen to

their own heartbeats, they will discover that they love each other to distraction."

"Ye ken mair than's in the catecheesm," remarked Salemina, yawning a little as she put away her

darningball. "It is pathetic to see you waste your time painting mediocre pictures, when as a lecturer upon

"The thousands would never satisfy me," I retorted, "so long as you remained uninstructed, for in your single

person you would so swell the sum of human ignorance on that subject that my teaching would be for ever in

"Very clever indeed! Well, what will Mr. Monroe say to me when I return to New York without his daughter,

"He has never denied Francesca anything in her life; why should he draw the line at a Scotsman? I am much

"I am not anxious about that," said Salemina loyally. "Francesca would be the life of an Inchcaldy parish."

"I am ashamed of you, Penelope; or I should be if you meant what you say. She can make the people love her

if she tries; when did she ever fail at that? But with Mr. Macdonald's talent, to say nothing of his family

connections, he is sure to get a church in Edinburgh in a few years if he wishes. Undoubtedly, it would not be

a great match in a money sense. I suppose he has a manse and three or four hundred pounds a year."

"I don't mean it, dear; it's only for fun; and it would be so absurd if we should leave Francesca over here as

"It isn't as if she were penniless," continued Salemina; "she has fortune enough to assure her own

independence, and not enough to threaten histhe ideal amount. I hardly think the good Lord's first intention

was to make her a minister's wife, but He knows very well that Love is a master architect. Francesca is full of

beautiful possibilities if Mr. Macdonald is the man to bring them out, and I am inclined to think he is."

"The impishness is transitory," she returned, "and I am speaking of permanent qualities. His is the stronger

and more serious nature, Francesca's the sweeter and more flexible. He will be the oaktree, and she will be

"Salemina, dear," I said penitently, kissing her grey hair, "I apologise: you are not absolutely ignorant about

Love, after all, when you call him the master architect; and that is very lovely and very true about the

Jean Dalziel came to visit us a week ago, and has put new life into our little circle. I suppose it was playing

`Sir Patrick Spens' that set us thinking about it, for one warm, idle day when we were all in the Glen we

began a series of balladrevels, in which each of us assumed a favourite character. The choice induced so

much argument and disagreement that Mr. Beresford was at last appointed head of the clan; and having

announced himself formally as The Mackintosh, he was placed on the summit of a hastily arranged pyramidal

cairn. He was given an ash wand and a rowantree sword; and then, according to ancient custom, his

pedigree and the exploits of his ancestors were recounted, and he was exhorted to emulate their example.

Now it seems that a Highland chief of the olden time, being as absolute in his patriarchal authority as any

prince, had a corresponding number of officers attached to his person. He had a bodyguard, who fought

around him in battle, and independent of this he had a staff of officers who accompanied him wherever he

Henchman, Ronald Macdonald; bard, Penelope Hamilton; spokesman or fool, Robin Anstruther;

swordbearer, Francesca Monroe; piper, Salemina; piper's attendant, Elizabeth Ardmore; baggage gillie, Jean

Dalziel; running footman, Ralph; bridle gillie, Jamie; ford gillie, Miss Grieve. The ford gillie carries the chief

across fords only, and there are no fords in the vicinity; so Mr. Beresford, not liking to leave a member of our

With The Mackintosh on his pyramidal cairn matters went very much better, and at Jamie's instigation we

began to hold rehearsals for certain festivities at Rowardennan; for as Jamie's birthday fell on the eve of the

All this occurred days ago, and yesterday evening the balladrevels came off, and Rowardennan was a scene

of great pageant and splendour. Lady Ardmore, dressed as the Lady of Inverleith, received the guests, and

there were all manner of tableaux, and ballads in costume, and pantomimes, and a grand march by the clan, in

Salemina was Lady Maisryshe whom all the lords of the north countrie came wooing.

Elizabeth Ardmore was Leezie Lindsay, who kilted her coats o' green satin to the knee and was aff to the

Hielands so expeditiously when her lover declared himself to be `Lord Ronald Macdonald, a chieftain of high

Brenda Macrae from Pettybaw House was Fairly Fair; Jamie, Sir Patrick Spens; Ralph, King Alexander of

Dunfermline; Mr. Anstruther, Bonnie Glenlogie, `the flower o' them a';' Mr. Macdonald and Miss Dalziel,

It is not to be supposed that all this went off without any of the difficulties and heartburnings that are

incident to things dramatic. When Elizabeth Ardmore chose to be Leezie Lindsay, she asked me to sing the

ballad behind the scenes. Mr. Beresford naturally thought that Mr. Macdonald would take the opposite part in

the tableau, inasmuch as the hero bears his name; but he positively declined to play Lord Ronald Macdonald,

Mr. Anstruther was rather disagreeable at the beginning, and upbraided Miss Dalziel for offering to be the

king's daughter Jean to Mr. Macdonald's Hynde Horn, when she knew very well he wanted her for Ladye

Jeanie in Glenlogie. (She had meantime confided to me that nothing could induce her to appear in Glenlogie;

Mr. Macdonald offended Francesca by sending her his castoff gown and begging her to be Sir Patrick

Spens; and she was still more gloomy (so I imagined) because he had not proffered his six feet of manly

beauty for the part of the captain in Mary Ambree, when the only other person to take it was Jamie's tutor. He

is an Oxford man and a delightful person, but very bowlegged; added to that, by the time the rehearsals had

ended she had been obliged to beg him to love some one more worthy than herself, and did not wish to

When the eventful hour came, yesterday, Willie and I were the only actors really willing to take lovers' parts,

save Jamie and Ralph, who were but too anxious to play all the characters, whatever their age, sex, colour, or

relations. But the guests knew nothing of these trivial disagreements, and at ten o'clock last night it would

have been difficult to match Rowardennan Castle for a scene of beauty and revelry. Everything went merrily

till we came to Hynde Horn, the concluding tableau, and the most effective and elaborate one on the

programme. At the very last moment, when the opening scene was nearly ready, Jean Dalziel fell down a

secret staircase that led from the tapestry chamber into Lady Ardmore's boudoir, where the rest of us were

dressing. It was a short flight of steps, but as she held a candle, and was carrying her costume, she fell

awkwardly, spraining her wrist and ankle. Finding that she was not maimed for life, Lady Ardmore turned

with comical and unsympathetic haste to Francesca, so completely do amateur theatricals dry the milk of

"Put on these clothes at once," she said imperiously, knowing nothing of the volcanoes beneath the surface.

"Hynde Horn is already on the stage, and somebody must be Jean. Take care of Miss Dalziel, girls, and ring

for more maids. Helene, come and dress Miss Monroe; put on her slippers while I lace her gown; run and

fetch more jewels,more still,she can carry off any number; not any rouge, Heleneshe has too much

colour now; pull the frock more off the shouldersit's a pity to cover an inch of them; pile her hair

higherhere, take my diamond tiara, child; hurry, Helene, fetch the silver cup and the cakeno, they are on

the stage; take her train, Helene. Miss Hamilton, run and open the doors ahead of them, please. I won't go

down for this tableau. I'll put Miss Dalziel right, and then I'll slip into the drawingroom, to be ready for the

We hurried breathlessly through an interminable series of rooms and corridors. I gave the signal to Mr.

Beresford, who was nervously waiting for it in the wings, and the curtain went up on Hynde Horn disguised

as the auld beggar man at the king's gate. Mr. Beresford was reading the ballad, and we took up the tableaux

at the point where Hynde Horn has come from a far countrie to see why the diamonds in the ring given him

by his own true love have grown pale and wan. He hears that the king's daughter Jean has been married to a

He therefore borrows the old beggar's garments and hobbles to the king's palace, where he petitions the porter

The curtain went up again. The porter, moved to pity, has gone to give the message to his lady. Hynde Horn

is watching the staircase at the rear of the stage, his heart in his eyes. The tapestries that hide it are drawn, and

The hero of the ballad, who had not seen his true love for seven long years, could not have been more amazed

at the change in her than was Ronald Macdonald at the sight of the flushed, excited, almost tearful king's

daughter on the staircase, Lady Ardmore's diamonds flashing from her crimson satin gown, Lady Ardmore's

rubies glowing on her white arms and throat; not Miss Dalziel, as had been arranged, but Francesca,

I never saw a prettier picture of sweet, tremulous womanhood, a more enchanting, breathing image of

Whereupon Hynde Horn lets his beggar weeds fall, and shines there the foremost and noblest of all the king's

There is no doubt that this tableau gained the success of the evening, and the participants in it should have

modestly and gratefully received the choruses of congratulation that were ready to be offered during the

supper and dance that followed. Instead of that, what happened? Francesca drove home with Miss Dalziel

before the quadrille d'honneur, and when Willie bade me good night at the gate in the loaning, he said, "I

"Of course; that is probably what he has in mind. But let me tell you this, Penelope: Macdonald is fathoms

deep in love with Francesca, and if she trifles with him she shall know what I think of her!"

"And let me tell you this, sir: Francesca is fathoms deep in love with Ronald Macdonald, little as you suspect

The occupants of BideaWee Cottage awoke in anything but a Jubilee humour, next day. Willie had

intended to come at nine, but of course did not appear. Francesca took her breakfast in bed, and came

listlessly into the sittingroom at ten o'clock, looking like a ghost. Jean's ankle was much betterthe sprain

proved to be not even a strainbut her wrist was painful. It was drizzling, too, and we had promised Miss

Ardmore and Miss Macrae to aid with the last Jubilee decorations, the distribution of medals at the church,

We have determined not to desert our beloved Pettybaw for the metropolis on this great day, but to celebrate

BideaWee Cottage does not occupy an imposing position in the landscape, and the choice of art fabrics at

the Pettybaw draper's is small, but the moment it should stop raining we were intending to carry out a

dazzling scheme of decoration that would proclaim our affectionate respect for the `little lady in black' on her

Diamond Jubilee. But would it stop raining?that was the question. The draper wasna certain that so licht a

shoo'r could richtly be called rain. The village weans were yearning for the hour to arrive when they might sit

on the wet golfcourse and have tea; manifestly, therefore, it could not be a bad day for Scotland; but if it

should grow worse, what would become of our mammoth subscription bonfire on Pettybaw Lawthe

There were no deputations to request the honour of Miss Macrae's distinguished services on this occasion;

that is not the way the selfrespecting villager comports himself in Fifeshire. The chairman of the local

committee, a respectable gardener, called upon Miss Macrae at Pettybaw House, and said, "I'm sent to tell ye

ye're to have the pleasure an' the honour of lichtin' the bonfire the nicht! Ay, it's a grand chance ye're havin',

When I complimented this rugged soul on his decoration of the triumphal arch under which the

schoolchildren were to pass, I said, "I think if her Majesty could see it, she would be pleased with our

"Ay, ye're richt, miss," he replied complacently. "She'd see that Inchcawdy canna compeer wi' us; we've

Truly, as Stevenson says, `he who goes fishing among the Scots peasantry with condescension for a bait will

At eleven o'clock a boy arrived at BideaWee with an interesting looking package, which I promptly

opened. That dear foolish lover of mine (whose foolishness is one of the most adorable things about him)

makes me only two visits a day, and is therefore constrained to send me some reminder of himself in the

intervening hours, or minutesa book, a flower, or a note. Uncovering the pretty box, I found a long,

"What is it?" I exclaimed, holding it up. "It is too long and not wide enough for a paperknife, although it

would be famous for cutting magazines. Is it a baton? Where did Willie find it, and what can it be? There is

something engraved on one side, something that looks like birds on a twig,yes, three little birds; and see

the lovely cairngorm set in the end! Oh, it has words cut in it: `To Jean: From Hynde Horn'Goodness me!

Francesca made a sudden swooping motion, and caught box, cover, and contents in her arms.

"It is mine! I know it is mine!" she cried. "You really ought not to claim everything that is sent to the house,

Penelopeas if nobody had any friends or presents but you!" and she rushed upstairs like a whirlwind.

I examined the outside wrapper, lying on the floor, and found, to my chagrin, that it did bear Miss Monroe's

name, somewhat blotted by the rain; but if the box were addressed to her, why was the silver thing inscribed

to Miss Dalziel? Well, Francesca would explain the mystery within the hour, unless she had become a

Fifteen minutes passed. Salemina was making Jubilee sandwiches at Pettybaw House, Miss Dalziel was

asleep in her room, I was being devoured slowly by curiosity, when Francesca came down without a word,

walked out of the front door, went up to the main street, and entered the village postoffice without so much

as a backward glance. She was a changed being, then! I might as well be living in a Gaboriau novel, I

thought, and went up into my little painting and writing room to address a programme of the Pettybaw

celebration to Lady Baird, watch for the glimpse of Willie coming down the loaning, and see if I could

Sitting down by my desk, I could find neither my wax nor my silver candlestick, my scissors nor my ball of

twine. Plainly Francesca had been on one of her borrowing tours; and she had left an additional trace of

herselfif one were neededin a book of old Scottish ballads, open at `Hynde Horn.' I glanced at it idly

while I was waiting for her to return. I was not familiar with the opening verses, and these were the first lines

A light dawned upon me! The silver mystery, then, was intended for a wandand a very pretty way of

making love to an American girl, too, to call it a `sceptre of rule over fair Scotland'; and the three birds were

But the real Hynde Horn in the dear old ballad had a truelove who was not captious and capricious and cold

Yet stay: behind the ballad book flung heedlessly on my desk was what should it be but the little morocco

case, empty now, in which our Francesca keeps her dead mother's engagement ringthe mother who died

when she was a wee child. Truly a very pretty modern ballad to be sung in these unromantic, degenerate

Francesca came in at the door behind me, saw her secret reflected in my telltale face, saw the sympathetic

moisture in my eyes, and, flinging herself into my willing arms, burst into tears.

"O Pen, dear, dear Pen, I am so miserable and so happy; so afraid that he won't come back, so frightened for

fear that he will! I sent him away because there were so many lions in the path, and I didn't know how to slay

them. I thought of my ffather; I thought of my cccountry. I didn't want to live with him in Scotland, I

knew that I couldn't live without him in America, and there I was! I didn't think I was ssuited to a minister,

and I am not; but oh! this pparticular minister is so ssuited to me!" and she threw herself on the sofa and

"Let us talk about the lions," I said soothingly. "But when did the trouble begin? When did he speak to you?"

"After the tableau last night; but of course there had been other othertimesand things."

"He had told me a week before that he should go away for a while, that it made him too wretched to stay here

just now; and I suppose that was when he got the silver wand ready for me. It was meant for the Jean of the

"You don't think he had it made for Jean Dalziel in the first place?"I asked this, thinking she needed some

"You know him better than that, Penelope! I am ashamed of you! We had read Hynde Horn together ages

before Jean Dalziel came; but I imagine, when we came to acting the lines, he thought it would be better to

have some other king's daughter; that is, that it would be less personal. And I never, never would have been

in the tableau, if I had dared refuse Lady Ardmore, or could have explained; but I had no time to think. And

then, naturally, he thought by me being there as the king's daughter thatthatthe lions were slain, you

know; instead of which they were roaring so that I could hardly hear the orchestra."

"Love him? I adore him!" she exclaimed in good clear decisive English, as she rose impetuously and paced

up and down in front of the sofa. "But in the first place there is the difference in nationality."

"I have no patience with you. One would think he was a Turk, an Esquimau, or a cannibal. He is white, he

speaks English, and he believes in the Christian religion. The idea of calling such a man a foreigner!"

"Oh, it didn't prevent me from loving him," she confessed, "but I thought at first it would be unpatriotic to

"Did you think Columbia could not spare you even as a rare specimen to be used for exhibition purposes?" I

"You know I am not so conceited as that! No," she continued ingenuously, "I feared that if I accepted him it

would look, over here, as if the homesupply of husbands were of inferior quality; and then we had such

disagreeable discussions at the beginning, I simply could not bear to leave my nice new free country, and ally

myself with his aeons of tiresome history. But it came to me in the night, a week ago, that after all I should

hate a man who didn't love his Fatherland; and in the illumination of that new idea Ronald's character

assumed a different outline in my mind. How could he love America when he had never seen it? How could I

convince him that American women are the most charming in the world in any better way than by letting him

live under the same roof with a good example? How could I expect him to let me love my country best unless

"You needn't offer so many apologies for your infatuation, my dear," I answered dryly.

"I am not apologising for it!" she exclaimed impulsively. "Oh, if you could only keep it to yourself, I should

like to tell you how I trust and admire and reverence Ronald Macdonald, but of course you will repeat

everything to Willie Beresford within the hour! You think he has gone on and on loving me against his better

judgment. You believe he has fought against it because of my unfitness, but that I, poor, weak, trivial thing,

am not capable of deep feeling and that I shall never appreciate the sacrifices he makes in choosing me! Very

well, then, I tell you plainly that if I had to live in a damp manse the rest of my life, drink tea and eat scones

for breakfast, andand buy my hats of the Inchcaldy milliner, I should still glory in the possibility of being

Ronald Macdonald's wifea possibility hourly growing more uncertain, I am sorry to say!"

"And the extreme aversion with which you began," I asked"what has become of that, and when did it begin

"Aversion!" she cried, with convincing and unblushing candour. "That aversion was a cover, clapped on to

keep my selfrespect warm. I abused him a good deal, it is true, because it was so delightful to hear you and

Salemina take his part. Sometimes I trembled for fear you would agree with me, but you never did. The more

I criticised him, the louder you sang his praisesit was lovely! The fact iswe might as well throw light

upon the whole matter, and then never allude to it again; and if you tell Willie Beresford, you shall never visit

my manse, nor see me preside at my mothers' meetings, nor hear me address the infant class in the

Sundayschoolthe fact is, I liked him from the beginning at Lady Baird's dinner. I liked the bow he made

when he offered me his arm (I wish it had been his hand); I liked the top of his head when it was bowed; I

liked his arm when I took it; I liked the height of his shoulder when I stood beside it; I liked the way he put

me in my chair (that showed chivalry), and unfolded his napkin (that was neat and businesslike), and pushed

aside all his wineglasses but one (that was temperate); I liked the side view of his nose, the shape of his

collar, the cleanness of his shave, the manliness of his toneoh, I liked him altogether, you must know how

it is, Penelopethe goodness and strength and simplicity that radiated from him. And when he said, within

the first halfhour, that international alliances presented even more difficulties to the imagination than others,

I felt, to my confusion, a distinct sense of disappointment. Even while I was quarrelling with him, I said to

myself, `Poor darling, you cannot have him even if you should want him, so don't look at him much!' But I

did look at him; and what is worse, he looked at me; and what is worse yet, he curled himself so tightly round

"Then you are really sure of your love this time, and you have never advised him to wed somebody more

"Not I!" she replied. "I wouldn't put such an idea into his head for worlds! He might adopt it!"

Just here the front door banged, and a manly step sounded on the stair. Francesca sat up straight in a big

chair, and dried her eyes hastily with her poor little wet ball of a handkerchief; for she knows that Willie is a

privileged visitor in my studio. The door opened (it was ajar) and Ronald Macdonald strode into the room. I

hope I may never have the same sense of nothingness again! To be young, pleasing, gifted, and to be

He dropped on one knee beside Francesca, and took her two hands in his without removing his gaze from her

speaking face. She burned, but did not flinch under the ordeal. The colour leaped into her cheeks. Love swam

She looked at him, trembling, as she said, "I meant every word, and far, far more. I meant all that a girl can

say to a man when she loves him, and wants to be everything she is capable of being to him, to his work, to

Even this brief colloquy had been embarrassing, but I knew that worse was still to come and could not be

delayed much longer, so I left the room hastily and with no attempt at apologynot that they minded my

presence in the least, or observed my exit, though I was obliged to leap over Mr. Macdonald's feet in passing.

"When I went into the postoffice, an hour ago," he replied, "I met Francesca. She asked me for Macdonald's

Edinburgh address, saying she had something that belonged to him and wished to send it after him. I offered

to address the package and see that it reached him as expeditiously as possible. `That is what I wish," she

said, with elaborate formality. `This is something I have just discovered, something he needs very much,

something he does not know he has left behind.' I did not think it best to tell her at the moment that

"Willie, you have the quickest intelligence and the most exquisite insight of any man I ever met!"

"But the fact was that I had been to see him off, and found him detained by the sudden illness of one of his

elders. I rode over again to take him the little parcel. Of course I don't know what it contained; by its size and

shape I should judge it might be a thimble, or a collarbutton, or a sixpence; but, at all events, he must have

needed the thing, for he certainly did not let the grass grow under his feet after he received it! Let us go into

the sittingroom until they come down,as they will have to, poor wretches, sooner or later; I know that I

am always being brought down against my will. Salemina wants your advice about the number of her

Majesty's portraits to be hung on the front of the cottage, and the number of candles to be placed in each

It was a halfhour later when Mr. Macdonald came into the room, and, walking directly up to Salemina,

"Miss Salemina," he said, with evident emotion, "I want to borrow one of your national jewels for my

"Good republican rulers do not wear coronets, as a matter of principle," he argued; "but in truth I fear I am

not thinking of her MajestyGod bless her! This gem is not entirely for state occasions.

It is the crowning of my own life rather than that of the British Empire that engages my present thought. Will

"And this is the end of all your international bickering?" Salemina asked teasingly.

"Yes," he answered; "we have buried the hatchet, signed articles of agreement, made treaties of international

comity. Francesca stays over here as a kind of missionary to Scotland, so she says, or as a feminine diplomat;

she wishes to be on hand to enforce the Monroe Doctrine properly, in case her government's accredited

"Salemina!" called a laughing voice outside the door. "I am won'erful lifted up. You will be a prood woman

the day, for I am now Estaiblished!" and Francesca, clad in Miss Grieve's Sunday bonnet, shawl, and black

cotton gloves, entered, and curtsied demurely to the floor. She held, as corroborative detail, a life of John

Knox in her hand, and anything more incongruous than her sparkling eyes and mutinous mouth under the

"I am now Estaiblished," she repeated. "Div ye ken the new asseestant frae Inchcawdy pairish? I'm the mon'

(a second deep curtsy here). "I trust, leddies, that ye'll mak' the maist o' your releegious preevileges, an' that

ye'll be constant at the kurruk. Have you given papa's consent, Salemina? And isn't it dreadful that he is

"Isn't it dreadful that she is not?" asked Mr. Macdonald. "Yet to my mind no woman in Scotland is half as

"And no man in America begins to compare with him," Francesca confessed sadly. "Isn't it pitiful that out of

the millions of our own countrypeople we couldn't have found somebody that would do? What do you think

"You never understood that speech of mine," he replied, with prompt mendacity. "When I said that

international marriages presented more difficulties to the imagination than others, I was thinking of your

marriage and mine, and that, I knew from the first moment I saw you, would be extremely difficult to

The rain continued at intervals throughout the day, but as the afternoon wore on the skies looked a trifle more

hopeful. It would be `saft,' no doubt, climbing the Law, but the bonfire must be lighted. Would Pettybaw be

behind London? Would Pettybaw desert the Queen in her hour of need? Not though the rain were bursting the

wellheads on Cawda; not though the swollen mountain burns drowned us to the knee! So off we started as

We were to climb the Law, wait for the signal from Cawda's lonely height, and then fire Pettybaw's torch of

loyalty to the little lady in black; not a blaze flaming out war and rumours of war, as was the beaconfire on

the old grey battlements of Edinburgh Castle in the days of yore, but a message of peace and goodwill.

Pausing at a hut on the side of the great green mountain, we looked north toward Helva, whitecrested with a

wreath of vapour. (You need not look on your map of Scotland for Cawda and Helva, for you will not find

them any more than you will find Pettybaw and Inchcaldy.) One by one the tops of the distant hills began to

clear, and with the glass we could discern the bonfire cairns upbuilt here and there for Scotland's evening

sacrifice of love and fealty. Cawda was still veiled, and Cawda was to give the signal for all the smaller fires.

Pettybaw's, I suppose, was counted as a flash in the pan, but not one of the hundred patriots climbing the

mountainside would have acknowledged it; to us the good name of the kingdom of Fife and the glory of the

British Empire depended on Pettybaw fire. Some of us had misgivings, too,misgivings founded upon Miss

Grieve's dismal prophecies. She had agreed to put nine lighted candles in each of our cottage windows at ten

o'clock, but had declined to go out of her kitchen to see a procession, hear a band, or look at a bonfire. She

had had a fair sickenin' day, an amount of work too wearifu' for one person by her lane. She hoped that the

bonfire wasna built o' Mrs. Sinkler's coals nor Mr. Macbrose's kindlings, nor soaked with Mr. Cameron's

paraffin; and she finished with the customary, but irrelative and exasperating, allusion to the exceedingly nice

And still we toiled upward, keeping our doubts to ourselves. Jean was limping bravely, supported by Robin

Anstruther's arm. Mr. Macdonald was ardently helping Francesca, who can climb like a chamois, but would

doubtless rather be assisted. Her gypsy face shone radiant out of her black cloth hood, and Ronald's was no

less luminous. I have never seen two beings more lovedaft. They comport themselves as if they had read the

manuscript of the tender passion, and were moving in exalted superiority through a less favoured world,a

Still we climbed, and as we approached the Grey Lady (a curious rock very near the summit) somebody

How the children hurrahed,for the infant heart is easily inflamed,and how their shrill Jubilee slogan

pierced the mystery of the night, and went rolling on from glen to glen to the Firth of Forth itself! Then there

was a shout from the rocketmen far out on the open moor,'Cawda's clear! Cawda's clear!' Back against a

silver sky stood the signal pile, and signal rockets flashed upward, to be answered from all the surrounding

Now to light our own fire. One of the village committee solemnly took off his hat and poured on oil. The

great moment had come. Brenda Macrae approached the sacred pile, and, tremulous from the effect of much

contradictory advice, applied the torch. Silence, thou Grieve and others, false prophets of disaster! Who now

could say that Pettybaw bonfire had been badly built, or that its fifteen tons of coal and twenty cords of wood

The flames rushed toward the sky with ruddy blaze, shining with weird effect against the black firtrees and

the blacker night. Three cheers more! God save the Queen! May she reign over us, happy and glorious! And

we cheered lustily, too, you may be sure! It was more for the woman than the monarch; it was for the

blameless life, not for the splendid monarchy; but there was everything hearty, and nothing alien in our tone,

The land darkened; the wind blew chill. Willie, Mr. Macdonald, and Mr. Anstruther brought rugs, and found

a sheltered nook for us where we might still watch the scene. There we sat, looking at the plains below, with

all the village streets sparkling with light, with rockets shooting into the air and falling to earth in golden rain,

with red lights flickering on the grey lakes, and with one beacon fire after another gleaming from the

hilltops, till we could count more than fifty answering one another from the wooded crests along the shore,

some of them piercing the rifts of lowlying clouds till they seemed to be burning in midheaven.

Then one by one the distant fires faded, and as some of us still sat there silently, far, far away in the grey east

there was a faint flush of carmine where the new dawn was kindling in secret. Underneath that violet bank of

cloud the sun was forging his beams of light. The polestar paled. The breath of the new morrow stole up out

of the rosy grey. The wings of the morning stirred and trembled; and in the darkness and chill and mysterious

awakening eyes looked into other eyes, hand sought hand, and cheeks touched each other in mute caress.

Every noon, during this last week, as we have wended our way up the loaning to the Pettybaw inn for our

luncheon, we have passed three magpies sitting together on the topmost rail of the fence. I am not prepared to

state that they were always the same magpies; I only know there were always three of them. We have just

discovered what they were about, and great is the excitement in our little circle. I am to be married

tomorrow, and married in Pettybaw, and Miss Grieve says that in Scotland the number of magpies one sees

is of infinite significance: that one means sorrow; two, mirth; three, a marriage; four, a birth, and we now

recall as corroborative detail that we saw one magpie, our first, on the afternoon of her arrival.

Mr. Beresford has been cabled for, and must return to America at once on important business. He persuaded

me that the Atlantic is an ower large body of water to roll between two lovers, and I agreed with all my heart.

A wedding was arranged, mostly by telegraph, in six hours. The Reverend Ronald and the Friar are to

perform the ceremony; a dear old painter friend of mine, a London R.A., will come to give me away;

Francesca will be my maid of honour; Elizabeth Ardmore and Jean Dalziel, my bridemaidens; Robin

Anstruther, the best man; while Jamie and Ralph will be kilted pagesinwaiting, and Lady Ardmore will

Never was there such generosity, such hospitality, such wealth of friendship! True, I have no wedding finery;

but as I am perforce a Scottish bride, I can be married in the white gown with the silver thistles in which I

Mr. Anstruther took a night train to and from London to choose the bouquets and bridal souvenirs. Lady

Baird has sent the veil, and a wonderful diamond thistle to pin it on,a jewel fit for a princess! With the dear

Dominie's note promising to be an usher came an antique silver casket filled with white heather. And as for

the bridecake, it is one of Salemina's gifts, chosen as much in a spirit of fun as affection. It is surely

appropriate for this American wedding transplanted to Scottish soil, and what should it be but a model, in

fairy icing, of Sir Walter's beautiful monument in Princes Street! Of course Francesca is full of nonsensical

quips about it, and says that the Edinburgh jail would have been just as fine architecturally (it is, in truth, a

building beautiful enough to tempt an aesthete to crime), and a much more fitting symbol for a

weddingcake, unless, indeed, she adds, Salemina intends her gift to be a monument to my folly.

Pettybaw kirk is trimmed with yellow broom from these dear Scottish banks and braes; and waving their

green fans and plumes up and down the aisle where I shall walk a bride, are tall ferns and bracken from

As I look back upon it, the life here has been all a ballad from first to last. Like the elfin Tam Lin,

and these hasty nuptials are a fittingly romantic ending to the summer's poetry. I am in a mood, were it

necessary, to be `ta'en by the milkwhite hand,' lifted to a pillion on a coalblack charger, and spirited `o'er

the border an' awa'' by my dear Jock o' Hazeldean. Unhappily, all is quite regular and aboveboard; no `lord o'

Langley dale' contests the prize with the bridegroom, but the marriage is at least unique and unconventional;

So `gallop down the westlin skies,' dear Sun, but, prythee, gallop back tomorrow! `Gang soon to bed,' an

you will, but rise again betimes! Give me Queen's weather, dear Sun, and shine a benison upon my