The young doctor--upon whom as a man of his own age, and one more like the people he had been accustomed to than those he now found around him, Edgar had looked, with more interest than any of his other relations had called from him--came up to him now with a face overcast with care. “May I speak to you about this painful subject,” he said, “before the others come in?” “Why a painful subject?” asked Edgar, with a smile, which was half tremulous with feeling, and half indignant, too proud for sympathy. “It may not be so to you,” said the young man. “She brought us up, every one of my family; but what can I do? I have a brother in Australia, too far off to help, and another a clerk in London. As for me, I have the charge of my eldest sister, who is a widow with a child. You don’t know what a hard fight it is for a young medical man struggling to make his way.” “No, not yet,” said Edgar, with a smile. “Not yet? How can you know? If I were to take my grandmother home with me, which I would do gladly, she would be far from everything that she knows and cares for--in a new place, among strangers. Her whole life would be broken up. And I could not take Jeanie,” the young man added, with a thrill of still greater pain in his voice. “There would be other dangers. What can we do? I cannot bear to think that she must leave this place. But I have so little power to help, and consequently so little voice in the matter.” “I have not very much,” said Edgar; “but yet enough, I think, to decide this question. And so long as I have a shilling, she shall not be driven away from her home. On that I have made up my mind.” His new cousin looked at him with admiration--then with a sigh: “What a thing money is,” he said; “ever so little of it. You can take a high hand with them, having something; but I, to whom Robert Campbell and Mr. MacKell have both lent money to set me going--” Edgar held out his hand to his companion. “When this is settled I shall be in the same position,” he said; “worse, for you have a profession, and I have none. You must teach me how I can best work for daily bread.” “You are joking,” said the young doctor, with a smile. Like the others, he could not believe that Edgar, once so rich, could ever be entirely poor; and that he should denude himself altogether of his living for the sake of the old mother, whom they were all quite ready to help--in reason, was an idea impossible to be comprehended, and which nobody believed for a moment. He said nothing in reply, and the two stood together before the door waiting for the other men of the party, who were looking over “the beasts” and farm implements, and calculating how much they would bring.