When Nathan was thus employed in our garden he always had dinner with Betty in the kitchen. Betty's forte in the culinary department was broth-making, and my mother used to say, with a smile, that when Nathan was her guest Betty always put her best foot foremost. Betty, with a blushing cheek, mildly repudiated the charge; and once, when in my presence my mother told Nathan of this, he blushed too, and to hide his confusion bent his head and tightened the trousers-straps under his knees. Broth, with boiled beef and potatoes to follow, as a rule constituted Betty's menu on these occasions, and there was always a 'word' between them when the beef was served, as Nathan insisted on retaining his soup-plate from which to eat it, and to this Betty strenuously objected. She declared 'it wasna the thing;' but he retorted that 'that was possible, but it was aye ae plate less to wash, and he liked the broth brae wi' the barley piles in it, as it moistened the tatties.' Immediately after his repast he retired to the stick-house; and there, seated on the chopping-log, he smoked his pipe in silence and meditation till the Auld Kirk clock chimed the hour of one. Betty was no vocalist; but on those days when Nathan worked in our garden she indulged much in what, out of gallantry towards her, I may call sweet sounds. She had only one song--it is her sole musical possession still--and during the years I spent far from the friends and scenes of my boyhood, as often as I heard the familiar strains of 'The Farmer's Boy,' Betty's timmer rendering came homely-like to my ear, and I saw a print-gowned, pensive-faced young woman subjecting newly washed delf to a vigorous rubbing, and watching through the kitchen window a big eident gardener turning over with gleaming spade the rich loamy garden soil. My mind harks back on these little scraps of memory as I sit here in my bedroom listening to Betty's ceaseless prattle and Nathan's monosyllabic responses. He is the same gaunt, silent Nathan, only much grayer, and his short beard, fringe-like, now covers a chin which once was clean-shaven and ruddy. He still wears leather straps on his workaday trousers; and, though I haven't seen it, I am confident the keen-bladed gully is somewhere about the recesses of his ample pockets. And he is Betty's 'man,' and Betty is his busy, careful wife, and as such they sit together in that kitchen taking their meals off that self-same table, and looking out on that same garden which long ago was the scene of his periodical labours.