But Miss Bethune stamped her foot, and the wiser woman yielded. She found Hesketh standing at the door of the sitting-room, when she went out to give him, very unwillingly, the money for his wife. “The impident weirdless creature! He would have been in upon my leddy in another moment, pressing to her very presence with his impident ways!” cried Gilchrist, hot and indignant. The faithful woman paused at the door as she came back, and looked at her mistress turning over and rearranging these treasures. “And her sitting playing with her bonnie dies, in a rapture like a little bairn!” she said to herself, putting up her apron to her eyes. And then Gilchrist shook her head--shook it, growing quicker and quicker in the movement, as if she would have twisted it off. But Miss Bethune was “very composed” when young Gordon came back. With an intense sense of the humour of the position, which mistress and maid communicated to each other with one glance of tacit co-operation, these two women comported themselves as if the behests of the young visitor who had taken the management of Miss Bethune’s _accès des nerfs_ upon himself, had been carried out. She assumed, almost unconsciously, notwithstanding the twinkle in her eye, the languid aspect of a woman who has been resting after unusual excitement. All women, they say (as they say so many foolish things), are actors; all women, at all events, let us allow, learn as the A B C of their training the art of taking up a rôle assigned to them, and fulfilling the necessities of a position. “You will see what I’m reduced to by what I’m doing,” she said. “As if there was nothing of more importance in life, I am just playing myself with my toys, like Dora, or any other little thing.” “So much the best thing you could do,” said young Harry; and he was eager and delighted to look through the contents of the box with her.