I wonder why this should be, and it is beginning to dawn upon me that Betty somehow imagines--wrongly, needless to say--that I look upon him as an intruder, something foreign to the element of our home-life of long ago; and, stranger still, I am conscious of that feeling in Nathan also. Though I have been resident here for over two weeks, and though he has cried upstairs to me every evening, he has only been twice in my room; and on both occasions he stood awkwardly at the door, holding on by the handle, and answering my questions with his head turned toward the landing. During the past week I have managed to limp my way downstairs, and on passing through the kitchen have stayed my steps to ca' the crack with him. But 'Yes, sir,' 'No, sir,' 'Ay, ay; imphm!' have so far been the sum-total of his contribution to the conversation. Some day, however, I know Nathan will thaw; some day soon they will both know the high esteem in which I hold him. In due season he will rid himself of his backwardness and shyness, and I shall be glad, for his honest blue eye and his pleasing serenity appeal to me, and I feel I want a friend like Nathan Hebron. To-night, after she had cleared away the remains of my homely supper, Betty sat down with her knitting at my little attic window. I have two pots of flowering musk and a lovely pelargonium in full bloom on my sill, and under pretence of procuring Nathan's advice as to their culture and well-being I inquired of Betty if she would ask him to come upstairs. 'Most certainly, Maister Weelum,' said she, with a pleasant nod; and she went out, returning a minute later with Nathan in her wake. I know he had been sitting in his easy-chair smoking in silence, with his stem-bonnet on and his shirt-sleeves rolled up, inactive, yet alert and ready to fulfil any of Betty's little behests; but at Betty's summons he had hastily donned a coat, and his head was bare. After leisurely examining my plants and drawling out a few disjointed directions, he turned to go downstairs; but I motioned him to a seat, and, rather reluctantly, I thought, he sat down. I urged him to join me in a smoke, and offered him a fill of my Edinburgh mixture; but he declined my pouch; and, taking out a deerskin spleuchan, he nipped a full inch of brown twist, teased it, rolled it in the palm of his rough, horny hand, and meditatively filled the bowl of his clay cutty. Betty noticed my little act of civility; but she plied her needles in silence till Nathan had struck a light and begun smoking. 'Ay, Maister Weelum,' she said, as Nathan fitted the glowing bowl of his pipe with a perforated metal cover, 'thae fancy ready-cut tobaccos are no' much in the line o' oor Nathan, puir falla.' 'Is that so? Well, every man to his own taste; but, Betty, excuse my asking so personal a question, why do you always refer to your goodman here as "Nathan, puir falla"?'