bairns, your affectionate uncle--ALEXANDER MUIR.” “What do you say, Agnes,” said Harry, “do we agree?” The little wife smiled. “When you behave yourself, Harry,” she said, laying her child in the cradle. “If we could manage it,” said Martha, “when Harry is able to walk, Agnes, I think you should go down together to see my uncle. You have never been in Ayr.” Agnes looked up brightly. “And I should like so well to go; and it would do Harry so much good. But then, Martha, how can we afford it?” Harry winced visibly. Some debts of his own, recklessly and foolishly incurred, had made the long-projected journey to Ayr impracticable a year ago; the fifteen pounds could do so little more than provide for the bare wants of the quarter; and yet again there were other debts waiting for the next payment of salary. Poor Harry! “I have been thinking,” said Martha, quietly; “I see how we can manage, Agnes; we shall only work the more busily, Rose and I, while you are away, and Harry will be the better of it. I see how we can do it. It will do Harry good to see my uncle and the little quiet house again.” Harry felt that there was meaning in her voice. To dwell again under the humble roof where all her hopes for his young life had risen; where she had nursed and tended the dawning mind within him, and laboured to lift his eyes, and teach him to look upward bravely, like a young eagle to the sun. Alas, poor Harry! For this revival of the unstained hopes of youth, Martha was willing to toil all the harder at her tedious unceasing toil; and he felt, almost for the first time, how hopeless these hopes were. How different were his expectations and hers. “It is a shame,” he said, abruptly, “for a rich man like Buchanan to keep us down so. We require a little relaxation, a little ease, as well as them; and I should like to know how it is possible we can get it on sixty pounds a year?” “Peter McGillivray has only fourteen shillings a week,” said Rose. “And what then?” “He keeps a family on it, Harry; at least his wife does; but then she is very thrifty.” “Thrifty! nonsense. Is not Agnes thrifty too? You are a foolish girl, Rose,” said her brother; “you think a few shillings is a great fortune. There now, a pound or two would take us comfortably down to my uncle’s; but how can we spare that, off the pittance they give me.” Yet Harry remembered that his own private expenses--the little debts of which his wife and sister knew nothing--amounted to more than that needful pound or two, and the remembrance brought a flush to his face and made him angry. “There is a meanness attends this mercantile wealth,” he exclaimed hastily; “a want of thought and consideration of others. What are we clerks but the stuff these masters of ours are made of? and yet how they keep us down.” “They were themselves kept down, and overcame it,” said Martha.