“Saftly, saftly, my man! nobody grudges her the little she wants. The difficulty is, wha’s to provide that little,” said Campbell. “We’re all decently well off in one sense, with no scrimping of meal or milk and a good suit of black for a Sunday or a funeral, and a silk gown for the wife. But to keep up a farm upon our joint contributions, as I hear is what you’re thinking of--a farm, the chanciest thing in creation!--I allow I canna see my way to that. Excuse me, Mr. Edgar, for speaking my mind, but you’re young, and your notions are too grand for the like of us--I’m no saying it’s your fault. We maun cut our coat according to our cloth. I’m no fond of relations in the house; but she’s a harmless body, and I’ll stretch a point for once: and John Bryce, in Sauchiehall St., will take Jeanie. He’s a man in a very decent way of business, and I’ve no doubt he could make her useful in the shop.” “But cannot you see,” cried Edgar, with a start and sudden wince, interrupting him, “that my poor old grandmother would be wretched without Jeanie? And Jeanie herself is too delicate a creature for any such life. They must stay together. Surely, surely,” cried the young man, “when she is helpless who has done so much for everybody, it is not too much that we should provide for something beyond her mere existence--her happiness as well.” Campbell had watched him very closely while he made this speech. The generous feeling with which he spoke brought the colour to Edgar’s cheek; he was unsuspicious of the meaning of the close scrutiny to which he was thus subjected, and made no effort to conceal this glow of natural emotion. “If it’s Jeanie you’re meaning,” said Campbell, with a laugh and significant look, “no doubt there are other arrangements that might be thought of; and a good man’s aye the best thing, especially when he has enough to live on. If that’s your thought, my lad, I am not the one to say you nay.” “If what is my thought?” said Edgar, bewildered. I do not think the idea had ever occurred to him before, and I cannot describe the thrill of wounded pride with which he received this shock. Jeanie! A child--a creature altogether out of his sphere. Jeanie! with her pretty peasant manners, and poetic homely dialect, a little girl whom he could be kind to, as he would be kind to the maid who milked the cows, or the child who ran his errands! In all the course of the three painful years that were past, I do not think Edgar had received any such cutting and sudden blow. He realized all his own humiliation when he saw himself placed in the imagination of the neighbourhood by little Jeanie’s side--her cousin, her often companion, her so-possible wooer! The thought stiffened him up all at once to stone. He forgot even his usual consideration for the feelings of others.