"ABEL MURRAY." "Well," said Dick, with his mouth full, "I see nothing to vex you in this, mother; he speaks very sensible. I meant to tell you the same thing. It is what you ought to know. I was meaning to say to you, 'Bring Lily home,' this very night." "Oh!" said Elizabeth, wringing her hands. "I knew you would be both in one story; it only wanted that. And what could I expect from two lads, that can no more see into the mind of a simple lass! That's what you do, all you men folk--put your own ill thoughts upon her that is as innocent of harm--oh, that's what you do! In the course of Providence, or maybe it's nature--the Lord deliver me from knowing which--you learn what an innocent lass need never know; and then all you've learned from ill folks, and all you've read from ill books, you think my bairn knows it as well as you!" To this most unprovoked and undeserved attack Dick made no reply. He held his tongue, being partially compelled by circumstances to that wise reticence, and occupied himself with his supper. It was the wisest way. After a while Elizabeth, who was influenced in a way she could have hardly believed, by her clumsy Dick's support and approval of what his brother said, calmed down out of her own offence and indignation, and began to consider the question too. "If you've heard that, and he's heard that, there may be something at the bottom of it: is that what you mean to tell me?" "Nothing against Lily," said Dick, "and _he_ says nothing against Lily; but she's young" (he was two years younger himself), "and if a gentleman says to her she's bonnier than all the rest put together, how is she to know it's not true?" "And so she is," said Elizabeth, with a gleam of pride; "there's no one o' them, no one o' them you could name the same day!" "Well, mother, well; that makes Abel all the more right in what he says, and me the less wrong. You wouldn't expect Mr Roger, the Squire of Waterdale, that will be member of Parliament and the Queen's counsellor, to marry Lily Murray, the cotter's daughter at Overbeck?" "He might search far and wide o'er the world to get one like her," said the mother. "And wherefore no'? her brother is as good a gentleman, and has as much chance to be the Queen's counsellor, as himself." "And that is all you know," said Dick, with a groan; "when her brother hears all that's said about Lily, and never has the heart to say, 'Hold your peace, lad, it's my sister.' Much good it will do her to have a brother that is like that." "What would you have him say?" said Elizabeth, with a shrill note of pain in her voice. "When he's living among gentlemen, would you have him publish to all the lords and ladies that make much of him that he's a cotter's son?"