The light, kind-hearted creature threw her napkin into the open door, skipped down the stair like a fairy, three steps at once, seized me by the hands--both hands--jumped up, and actually kissed me. I was a little ashamed; but what swain, of somewhere inclining to sixty could resist the advances of a fair contemporary? So we allowed the full degree of kindness to the meeting--HONI SOIT QUI MAL Y PENSE--and then Janet entered instantly upon business. “An ye’ll gae in, man, and see your auld lodgings, nae doubt and Shanet will pay ye the fifteen shillings of change that ye ran away without, and without bidding Shanet good day. But never mind” (nodding good-humouredly), “Shanet saw you were carried for the time.” By this time we were in my old quarters, and Janet, with her bottle of cordial in one hand and the glass in the other, had forced on me a dram of usquebaugh, distilled with saffron and other herbs, after some old-fashioned Highland receipt. Then was unfolded, out of many a little scrap of paper, the reserved sum of fifteen shillings, which Janet had treasured for twenty years and upwards. “Here they are,” she said, in honest triumph, “just the same I was holding out to ye when ye ran as if ye had been fey. Shanet has had siller, and Shanet has wanted siller, mony a time since that. And the gauger has come, and the factor has come, and the butcher and baker--Cot bless us just like to tear poor auld Shanet to pieces; but she took good care of Mr. Croftangry’s fifteen shillings.” “But what if I had never come back, Janet?” “Och, if Shanet had heard you were dead, she would hae gien it to the poor of the chapel, to pray for Mr. Croftangry,” said Janet, crossing herself, for she was a Catholic, “You maybe do not think it would do you cood, but the blessing of the poor can never do no harm.” I agreed heartily in Janet’s conclusion; and as to have desired her to consider the hoard as her own property would have been an indelicate return to her for the uprightness of her conduct, I requested her to dispose of it as she had proposed to do in the event of my death--that is, if she knew any poor people of merit to whom it might be useful. “Ower mony of them,” raising the corner of her checked apron to her eyes--“e’en ower mony of them, Mr. Croftangry. Och, ay. ‘There is the puir Highland creatures frae Glenshee, that cam down for the harvest, and are lying wi’ the fever--five shillings to them; and half a crown to Bessie MacEvoy, whose coodman, puir creature, died of the frost, being a shairman, for a’ the whisky he could drink to keep it out o’ his stamoch; and--”