‘I beg your pardon, Miss Barclay; I was wrong to venture the remark. But may I say in excuse, that it is not unnatural to imagine a young woman, doing so much for a young man, just a little bit in love with him?’ ‘I wud fain hae yer leddyship un’erstan’,’ returned Kirsty, ‘that my father, my mother, and mysel, we’re jist ane and nae mair. No ane o’ ’s hes a wuss that disna belang to a’ three. The langest I can min’, it’s been my ae ambition to help my father and mother to du what they wantit. I never desirit merriage, my leddy, and gien I did, it wudna be wi’ sic as Francie Gordon, weel as I lo’e him, for we war bairnies, and laddie and lassie thegither: I wudna hae a man it was for me to fin’ faut wi’! ’Deed, mem, what fowk ca’s love, hes neither airt nor pairt i’ this metter!’ Not to believe the honest glow in Kirsty’s face, and the clear confident assertion of her eyes, would have shown a poor creature in whom the faculty of belief was undeveloped. Sir Haco and lady Macintosh insisted on Kirsty’s taking up her abode with them while she was in Edinburgh; and Kirsty, partly in the hope of expediting the object of her mission thereby, and partly because her heart was drawn to her new friends, gladly consented. Before a week was over, like understanding like, her hostess felt as if she were a daughter until now long waiting for her somewhere in the infinite. The self-same morning, sir Haco sat down to his study-table, and began writing to every officer alive who had served with Francis Gordon, requesting to know his feeling, and that of the regiment about him. Within three days he received the first of the answers, which kept dropping in for the next six months. They all described Gordon as rather a scatterbrain, as not the less a favourite with officers and men, and as always showing the courage of a man, or rather of a boy, seeing he not unfrequently acted with a reprehensible recklessness that smacked a little of display. ‘That’s Francie himsel!’ cried Kirsty, with the tears in her eyes, when her host read, to this effect, the first result of his inquiry. Within a fortnight he received also, from one high in office, the assurance that, if Mr. Gordon, on his recovery, wished to enter her majesty’s service, he should have his commission. While her husband was thus kindly occupied, lady Macintosh was showing Kirsty every loving attention she could think of, and, in taking her about Edinburgh and its neighbourhood, found that the country girl knew far more of the history of Scotland than she did herself. She would gladly have made her acquainted with some of her friends, but Kirsty shrank from the proposal: she could not forget how her hostess had herself misinterpreted the interest she took in Francie Gordon. As soon as she felt that she could do so without seeming ungrateful, she bade her new friends farewell, and hastened home, carrying with her copies of the answers which sir Haco had up to that time received.