But there is another person in the background, draping the black lace which adorns her new cloak gracefully over her arm, throwing back her shoulders with a slightly ostentatious, disdainful movement, and holding up her head like Lady Anne. Ah, Katie! simple among the great people, but very anxious to look like a grand lady among the small! Very willing are you in your heart to have the unsophisticated fun of this penny wedding to which you are bound, but with a dignified reluctance are you preparing to go; and though Isabell smiles, and Janet pretends to laugh, Janet’s betrothed is awed, and thinks there is something very magnificent about Lady Anne Erskine’s friend. They make quite a procession as they cross the burn, and wind along the pathway towards the town;—Janet and her companion hurrying on first; young Kilbrachmont following, very proud of the wife who holds his arm, and looking with smiling admiration on the little pretty sister at his other hand; while the miller and his wife bring up the rear. “Weel, I wouldna be a boaster,” said Mrs Stewart; “it would ill set us, wi’ sae muckle reason as we have to be thankful. But just look at that bairn. It’s my fear she’ll be getting a man o’ anither rank than ours, the little cuttie! I wouldna say but she looks down on Kilbrachmont his ain very sel.” “She’s no blate to do onything o’ the kind,” said the miller. “And how’s the like o’ you to ken?” retorted his wife. “It’s my ain blame, nae doubt, for speaking to ye. Ye’re a’ very weel with your happer and your meal, John Stewart; but what should you ken about young womenfolk?” “Weel, weel, sae be it, Isabell,” said John. “It’s a mercy ye think ye understand yoursels, for to simple folk ye’re faddomless, like the auld enemy. I pretend to nae discernment amang ye.” “There winna be ane like her in the haill Town House,” said Mrs Stewart to herself; “no Isabell even, let alane Janet; and the bit pridefu’ look—the little cuttie!—as if _she_ was ony better than her neighbours.” The Town House of West Anster is a low-roofed, small-windowed room, looking out to the churchyard on one side, and to a very quiet street on the other; for West Anster is a suburban and rural place, in comparison with its more active brother on the other side of the burn, by whom it is correspondingly despised. Climbing up a narrow staircase, the party entered the room, in which at present there was very little space for locomotion, as two long tables, flanked by a double row of forms, and spread for a dinner, at which it was evident the article guest would be a most plentiful one, occupied almost the whole of the apartment. The company had just begun to assemble; and Katie, now daintily condescending to accept her brother-in-law’s arm, returned with him to the foot of the stair, there to await the return of the marriage procession from the manse, at which just now the ceremony was being performed.