And as she spoke the girl wrung her slender interlaced fingers, while the old minister kindly patted her head, as he had often done in her childhood. After a pause, Mary said, in a voice broken more than once by a hard dry sob, 'Our uncle in Australia would seem to have died months ago according to this letter, yet we only hear of the event now.' 'Yes.' 'And we have been living here in another person's house, though we deemed it our own--another person's, and not thinking of rent?' she added, bitterly. 'Yes.' Mary thought the doctor took the matter somewhat placidly, and felt indignation mingle with her grief. 'And for the roof that covered us, Ellinor and I have actually been indebted for months to our cousin Wellwood, the cold-blooded son of a cold-blooded father, who died at feud with ours, and amid the whirl of London life never troubled himself about our existence, even when we were left as orphan girls upon the world. So we have been living here in dear, dear Birkwoodbrae in a fool's paradise, after all--after all!' continued Mary, with growing bitterness of tone and heart. '"The paradise of fools--to few unknown," as Milton has it,' said the doctor, sententiously. 'To turn us out of Birkwoodbrae is nothing less than the most cruel injustice!' resumed Mary, with anger. 'But legal. It is the law of entail.' 'Birkwoodbrae is twice as valuable now as it was when poor papa settled here, some twenty years ago, and he and we have made it so. It is hard, it is bitter, our home--our dear home--we have known no other; and so near where they lie--papa and mamma--so near this house in which I closed their eyes.' 'I doubt not that if your cousin Wellwood were properly appealed to----' 'We should die rather than appeal to him!' interrupted Mary, impetuously, while stamping her little foot upon the floor. 'To do so would be enough to make papa turn in his grave. Though Birkwoodbrae is inexpressibly dear to Ellinor and to me. Papa used to say of cousin Wellwood as a boy, though he never saw him, that he was a puzzle to the whole family.' 'How, Mary?' 'Well, as--as--like a treacherous cuckoo's egg that is dropped into a sparrow's nest and becomes a puzzle to the poor sparrow, which wonders and compares it with her own little brood.' 'What an odd simile, my dear,' said Dr. Wodrow, his face actually rippling over with a smile brighter than Mary relished under the circumstances, and recalled the aphorism of that unpleasant fellow, J. J. Rousseau, that many people feel an internal satisfaction at the troubles of even their best friends. 'Then you will not trust a little to humanity and to Wellwood?' 'Death were preferable, I repeat!' exclaimed Mary, though her tears were falling fast now. 'Consider--blood is thicker than water, among us in Scotland particularly.'