With the very next morning the distractions of common earth returned. Behind the closed shutters, the women began to examine the old napery, and the men to calculate what the furniture, the cow, the cocks and hens would bring. James Murray valued it all, pencil and notebook in hand. Nothing would have induced the family to show so little respect as to shorten the six or seven days’ interval before the funeral, but it was a very tedious interval for them all. Mrs. Campbell drove off with her husband to her own house on the second day, and James Murray returned to Greenock; but the MacColls stayed, and Margaret, and made their “blacks” in the darkened room below, and spoke under their breath, and wearied for the funeral day which should release them. Margaret, perhaps, was the one on whom this interval fell most lightly; but yet Margaret had her private sorrows, less easy to bear than the natural grief which justified her tears. The sailor Willie paid but little attention to her beauty and her pathetic looks. He was full of plans about his little sister, about taking her with him on his next voyage, to strengthen her and “divert” her; and poor Margaret, whose heart had gone out of her breast at first sight of him, as it had done in her early girlhood, felt her heart sicken with the neglect, yet could not believe in it. She could not believe in his indifference, in his want of sympathy with those feelings which had outlived so many other things in her mind. She went to Edgar a few days after their grandmother’s death with a letter in her hand. She went to him for advice, and I cannot tell what it was she wished him to advise her. She did not know herself; she wanted to do two things, and she could but with difficulty and at a risk to herself do one. “This is a letter I have got from Mr. Thornleigh,” she said, with downcast looks. “Oh! Cousin Edgar, my heart is breaking! Will you tell me what to do?” Harry’s letter was hot and desperate, as was his mind. He implored her, with abject entreaties, to marry him, not to cast him off; to remember that for a time she had smiled upon him, or seemed to smile upon him, and not to listen now to what anyone might say who should seek to prejudice her against him. “What does my family matter when I adore you?” cried poor Harry, unwittingly betraying himself. And he begged her to send him one word, only one word--permission to come down and speak for himself. Edgar felt, as he read this piteous epistle, like the wolf into whose fangs a lamb had thrust its unsuspecting head. “How can I advise you how to answer?” he said, giving her back the letter, glad to get it out of his hands. “You must answer according to what is in your heart.” Upon this Margaret wept, wringing her lily hands.