notes, nor gave bim the slightest encouragement,
unless it may have been running up-stairs to
put on my bonnet when I saw him advancing
to my cottage, and making believe I was going
to pay a visit, because it is so much easier to
talk to him walking down the road than sitting
face to face in the parlour, which is such a
nervous position."

I read the notes which she gave me. The
first was written in polite terms of friendliness,
while the last, beginning "My dearest Jenny,"
was the nearest possible approach to a love-
letter. It was very nicely worded, yet
eminently calculated to flatter the vanity and touch
the heart of the simple little maiden lady to
whom it was addressed, especially if her heart
were at all inclined to be soft towards the
writer.

"That is the one, my dear," said Miss
Pollard, her blushes rising to their climax—"that is
the one which cost me a sleepless night, and
jelly-making at four o'clock this morning. That
is the one which resolved me to come and ask
your advice, should Miss Ashenhurst not be in
the neighbourhood."

Having examined the notes, I could not but
give my opinion that they could only mean that
Dr. Strong wished to marry Miss Pollard. I
had at first suspected a hoax, but it chanced
that I had very recently had an opportunity of
seeing the doctor's handwriting in a note which
he had sent with a nosegay to Sylvia. The
evidence, to me, seemed conclusive, and the
little spinster testified her joy at my verdict by
falling upon my neck and kissing me. Sylvia
came in after that, and I thought she must have
seen or overheard something, there was such a
mischievous laugh in the corner of her eye.
But the conversation immediately turned on
canaries.

It was shortly after this that I saw one day
the unusual apparition of my father coming up
the walk from the river quite early in the
afternoon. I thought he looked stooped, and
flushed with the heat, and my mind misgave me
that he was not well. He espied me at my
window, and came up to my room.

"All alone, Mattie!" said he, "and looking
as woe-begone as if the mills had stopped.
What have you done with that scamp, Luke?
You are idling him finely these times!"

"You are quite mistaken, papa," I said; "I
have not seen Luke more than twice during the
past ten days."

"Nonsense!" cried my father, quite aghast.

"Indeed," I said, "it is truth."

Then he broke out in wrath against the senseless
contradictiousness of women. "You have
kept him doing errands for you through the
country," he said; "matching silks, or buying
bobbins, I'll be bound. I am not going to scold
you," he added, "but it interrupts business
badly, lass; it plays the very devil with business.
There, there, you've been too long shut up in
this oven of a room—infernally hot—would kill
me in a week. Where is that fine London
madam that was supposed to have broken her
heart—pish!—why does she not give you her
arm into the garden to get the air?"

"An arm would not do," I said; "but I am
not very heavy. You could carry me to the
summer-house, papa."

He chafed and frowned at the audacity of the
proposal, but I got my arms about his neck, and
we accomplished the journey together. A year
before I had hardly ventured to lift my voice in
my father's presence, but he was altered, and I
was altered, and since then I had learned my
value. I remembered that day that I was worth
thousands of capital to the mill, and I dared to
claim affection and consideration. I had been a
good obedient daughter, and I was reaping the
reward of my conduct.

"Papa," said I, "if Luke is making holiday
on his own account, I do not see why you and I
should not have a little feast;" and I sent for
some wine and fruit.

"Luke is a good industrious lad," said my
father, sipping his wine, "and he has never been
given to gadding till lately. The mills are
thriving; spinning gold every day. Gordon and
Elphinstone will be foremost among the
merchant-princes of the country. But it will not
do if Luke takes to gadding. I thought he had
been dangling after you; but if there is anybody
else, it is worse. I tell you what it is, Mattie,
you must cut the year short, and get him into
harness at once."

Ah me! how I had cheated myself with false
faith in my own meekness. Just now I had been
enjoying my father's better humour and the new
fresh taste of the open air; but at these last
words some spirit of evil seemed to leap up in
the quiet garden there and wrestle with, and go
nigh to choke me. A wicked despair took
possession of me, and I dashed my glass with its
wine into the bushes near.

"I bargained for a year," said some one who
seemed beside me; and then a convulsion caught
me, and shook me like a punished child.

"Good God!" cried my father. "Stop, girl!
Hush! for mercy's sake. Confound women!
Mattie, lass, you shall have your own time, only
stop crying, and don't kill yourself. Do what
you please, only cure Luke of his gadding. And,
by-the-by, I ought to be back at the mills.
There, child, good-bye; and I'll send Elspie to
give you another glass of wine."

And my father actually ran away, scared by
my frantic passion. Things were strangely
altered when I could frighten him, whom all my
life I had feared. After he had gone, I wept
more quietly to see how he was broken down in
mind as well as body. Dependence on Luke
Elphinstone, dependence on a child's obedience,
had left its wearing mark upon his proud spirit.
The stern reticent man was falling into a timorous
and choleric old age.

I think I have told before how the old garden
was built high on little walls, how the twig
summer-house stood at the lower end with the
burn running behind it, and how the lilac-trees
that lined the summer-house hung over the
shady path beside the burn. I know not