“What are you doing there,” she said, “you little idle cutty? Did not Granny tell you to see after the dinner? It may be good for her, but it’s ruination to you, if you had the sense to see it. Dinna let me see you sit there, smil--smiling at a young lad! I wonder you dinna think shame! It’s all my mother’s fault,” she added bitterly, placing herself in the chair by the window, which Jeanie, in dismay and tears, hastily evacuated; “_we_ were kept to our work and kept in order, in our day; but she’s spoiled every creature that’s come near her since. I’m glad I’ve nae girls mysel that she can ruin as she’s ruined Jeanie!” “Poor thing, she has nae mother to keep her right,” said the softer sister. I think, for my part, that the sharp offence and bitterness of the women at the sudden turn that things had taken, showed a higher moral sense than the eager satisfaction with which, after the first moment, the men received it. Murray and Campbell both felt the immediate relief, as far as they themselves were concerned. The women felt first the shame and stigma of not having attempted to do for their mother what this stranger was so ready to do. The result was much less pleasant and less amiable to witness, but it showed, I think, a higher feeling of right and wrong. CHAPTER VI. A Party in a Parlour. The dinner which followed was not, the first part of it at least, a very comfortable meal. Mrs. Murray herself was profoundly shaken by the conference altogether. She was unable to say anything to her grandson except the almost wild “No, lad; no, Edgar, my bonnie man!” with which she had endeavoured to stop him at first. After this she had not uttered a word. She had taken his hand between her old and worn hands, and raised her face as if to God--praying for blessings on him? No--I do not think her mind was capable of such an effort--she was looking up to the Divine Friend who had been her refuge in everything these seventy years, in a strange rapture of surprise and joy. How much part the sudden change in her circumstances had to do with the joy, I cannot tell--very little I think, infinitesimally little. “I have one son, one true son, after all; heart of my heart, and soul of my soul!” This was the predominating thought in her mind, the half-ecstatic feeling which flooded her old being like sudden sunshine. Amid all the griefs and disappointments to which such a soul is liable, there remains to one now and then the tender and generous delight of seeing others do by her as she would have done by them. How sweet it is; before all delight in gifts, or even in affection! We think of the golden rule more often in the way of a command, employing it to touch our own souls to languid duty; but there are occasions when it is given back to us, so to speak, in the way of recompense, vivified and quickened into rapture. This old woman had practised it as she could all her life, and others had not