“We might have gone to sea and worked our passages before the mast, if you had only been a laddie and not a lassie,” Eric said with a sigh and a profound sense of the general contrariety of events. This unalterable misfortune, which somehow seemed (though it was she who suffered from it most) her fault, stopped Effie’s tears, and brought instead a look of despair into her round face. There flashed through her mind an idea of the possibility of neutralizing this disability by means of costume. Rosalind did so in Shakespeare, and Viola, and so had other heroines in less distant regions. But at the idea of _trousers_ Effie’s countenance flamed, and she rejected the thought. It was quite possible to endure being unhappy, even in her small experience she was well aware of that--but unwomanly! Oh, what would mamma say? That utterance of habit, the words that rose to her lips without thinking, even now when mamma was about to have a successor--a new mother! brought back the tears in torrents. She flung herself upon Eric’s shoulder, and he, poor fellow, gave her with quivering lips a little furtive kiss, the only consolation he could think of, though they were not at all used to caressing each other. Poor children! and yet Mr. Ogilvie had done nothing cruel, and Mrs. Ogilvie was the best-intentioned woman in the world. It was lucky that they were found at this critical moment by an individual who is of great importance in this little record of events, as he was in the parish and the neighbourhood generally,--that is Uncle John. He was the minister of Gilston; he was their mother’s brother; and he was one of the men selected by Providence for the consolation of their fellow-creatures. Perhaps he was not always very wise. He was too much under the sway of his heart to be infallible in the way of advice, although that heart was so tender and full of sympathy that it often penetrated secrets which were undiscoverable to common men. But in his powers of comfort-giving he was perfect. The very sight of him soothed the angry and softened the obdurate, and he dried the tears of the young by some inspiration given to him alone. “What is the matter?” he said in his large soft voice, which was deep bass and very masculine, yet had something in it too of the wood-pigeon’s brooding tones. They were seated at the foot of a tree in the little wood that protected Gilston House from the east, on the roots of the big ash which were like gray curves of rock among the green moss and the fallen leaves. He came between them, sitting down too, raising Effie with his arm. “But I think I can guess. You are just raging at Providence and your father, you two ungrateful bairns.” “Ungrateful!” cried Effie. She was the most speechless of the two, the most prostrate, the most impassioned, and therefore was most ready to reply.