"This is a friend whom I have brought to see you," said Flora, observing the glance. The old woman held out her hand, and Lucy pressed it tenderly. "She has come all the way from London to see our mountains, granny." "Ay?" said the old woman with a kind motherly smile: "it's a lang way to Lunnon, a lang way, ay. Ye'll be thinkin' we're a wild kind o' folk here-away; somewhat uncouth we are, no doot." "Indeed, I think you are very nice people," said Lucy, earnestly. "I had no idea how charming your country was, until I came to it." "Oo-ay! we can only get ideas by seein' or readin'. It's a grawnd thing, travellin', but it's wonderfu' what readin' 'll do. My guid-man, that's deed this therteen year,--ay,--come Marti'mas, he wrought in Lunnon for a year before we was marrit, an' he sent me the newspapers reglar once a month--ay, the English is fine folk. My guid-man aye said that." Lucy expressed much interest in this visit of the departed guid-man, and, having touched a chord which was extremely sensitive and not easily put to rest after having been made to vibrate, old Mrs Cameron entertained her with a sweet and prolix account of the last illness, death, and burial of the said guid-man, with the tears swelling up in her bright old eyes and hopping over her wrinkled cheeks, until Flora forbade her to say another word, reminding her of the doctor's orders to keep quiet. "Oo-ay, ye'll be gawin' to read me a bit o' the book?" "I thought you would ask that; what shall it be?" "Oo, ye canna go wrang." Flora opened the Bible, and, selecting a passage, read it in a slow, clear tone, while the old woman lay back and listened with her eyes upturned and her hands clasped. "Isn't it grawnd?" said she, appealing to Lucy with a burst of feeling, when Flora had concluded. Lucy was somewhat taken aback by this enthusiastic display of love for the Bible, and felt somewhat embarrassed for an appropriate answer; but Flora came to her rescue: "I have brought you a book, granny; it will amuse you when you are able to get up and read. There now, no thanks--you positively _must_ lie down and try to sleep. I see your cheek is flushed with all this talking. Good-day, granny!" "The next whom we will visit is a very different character," said Flora, as they walked briskly along the road that followed the windings of the river; "he dwells half a mile off." "Then you will have time to tell me about old Moggy," said Lucy. "You have not yet fulfilled your promise to tell me the secret connected with her, and I am burning with impatience to know it." "Of course you are; every girl of your age is set on fire by a secret. I have a mind to keep you turning a little longer." "And pray, grandmamma," said Lucy, with an expressive twinkle in her eyes, "at what period of your prolonged life did you come to form such a just estimate of character in girls of _my_ age?"