“My religion is greatly falling off because I don’t pray with so much attention when I am saying my prayers and my character is lost away a-mong the Braehead people. I hope I will be religious again, but as for regaining my character I despare for it.... Everybody just now hates me and I deserve it, for I don’t behave well.” In spite of her unfortunate experiences at Braehead, she was very anxious to return to it, and upbraided Isa in verse, on another occasion, when their visit, she learned, was only to be two days long: “Beautious Isabella say How long at braehead will you stay O for a week or not so long Then weel desart the busy throng Ah can you see me sorrow so And drop a hint that you must go I thought you had a better hart Than make me with my dear friends part But now I see that you have not And that you mock my dreadful lot My health is always bad and sore And you have hurt it a deal more.” “The reason I wrote this poem is because I am going to Braehead only two days.” No wonder she loved Braehead: “Here at Braehead I enjoy rurel felisity to perfection, content, retirement, rurel friendship, books all these dwell here, but I am not sure of ease and alternate labour useful life.” At Braehead even prose must take the colour of poetry from waving trees and morning sunbeams: “In the morning the first thing I see is most beautiful trees spreading their luxurant branches between the Horison and me.... “I love to see the morning sun that rise so long before the moon ... the moon that casts her silver light when the Horison sinks beneath the clouds and scateres its light on the surface of the earth.” Another place where Marjorie dearly loved to go visiting was Ravelston House: “Ravelston is a fine place, because I get balm wine and many other dainties, and it is extremely pleasant to me by the company of swine, geese, cocks, etc., and they are the delight of my heart.” Whether at home in Edinburgh, or in Braehead, or Ravelston, Isabella continues the education of her little charge: “I am thinking,” says Marjorie, in a serious Sunday mood, “how I shall improve the many talents I have. I am sorry I have threwn them away, it is shocking to think of it when many have not the instruction. I have, because Isabella teaches me to or three hours every day in reading and writing and arethmatick and many other things and religion into the bargain. On Sundays she teaches me to be virtuous.” Saturday was a half-holiday—even from virtue! “This is Saturday, and I am very glad of it, because I have play half of the day and I get money too, but alas I owe Isabella fourpence, for I am fined 2 pence whenever I bite my nails.” On another Saturday we hear of her having “sauntered about the woulds and by the burn side and dirtied myselfe, which puts me in mind of a song my mother composed. It was that she was out and dirtied herselfe, which is like me.”