‘Puir wee dauty! Gien he hae a hert ony bigger nor Tod Lowrie’s (_the fox’s_) ain, he’ll come to ye to the Knowe, and say what he has to say!’ ‘He winna ken whaur I am!’ answered Phemy with an agonized burst of dry sobbing. ‘Will he no? I s’ see to that--and this verra nicht!’ exclaimed Kirsty. ‘I’ll gie him ilka chance o’ doin the richt thing!’ ‘But he’ll be angert at me!’ ‘What for? Did he tell ye no to tell?’ ‘Ay did he.’ ‘Waur and waur!’ cried Kirsty indignantly. ‘He wad hae ye a’ in his grup! He tellt ye, nae doobt, ’at ye was the bonniest lassie ’at ever was seen, and bepraised ye ’at yer ain minnie wouldna hae kenned ye! Jist tell me, Phemy, dinna ye think a hantle mair o’ yersel sin’ he took ye in han’?’ She would have Phemy see that she had gathered from him no figs or grapes, only thorns and thistles. Phemy made no reply: had she not every right to think well of herself? He had never said anything to her on that subject which she was not quite ready to believe. Kirsty seemed to divine what was passing in her thought. ‘A man,’ she said, ‘’at disna tell ye the trowth aboot himsel ’s no likly to tell ye the trowth aboot _your_sel! Did he tell ye hoo mony lassies he had said the same thing til afore ever he cam to you? It maitered little sae lang as they war lasses as hertless and toom-heidit as himsel, and ower weel used to sic havers; but a lassie like you, ’at never afore hearkent to siclike, she taks them a’ for trowth, and the leein sough o’ him gars her trow there was never on earth sic a won’erfu cratur as her! What pleesur there can be i’ leein ’s mair nor I can faddom! Ye’re jist a gey bonnie lassie, siclike as mony anither; but gien ye war a’ glorious within, like the queen o’ Sheba, or whaever she may happen to hae been, there wad be naething to be prood o’ i’ that, seein ye didna contrive yersel. No ae stane, to bigg yersel, hae _ye_ putten upo’ the tap o’ anither!’ Phemy was nowise capable of understanding such statement and deduction. If she was lovely, as Frank told her, and as she saw in the glass, why should she not be pleased with herself? If Kirsty had been made like her, she would have been just as vain as she! All her life the doll never saw the beauty of the woman. Beside Phemy, Kirsty walked like an Olympian goddess beside the naiad of a brook. And Kirsty was a goddess, for she was what she had to be, and never thought about it. Phemy sank down in the heather, declaring she could go no farther, and looked so white and so pitiful that Kirsty’s heart filled afresh with compassion. Like the mother she was, she took the poor girl yet again in her arms, and, carrying her quite easily now that she did not struggle, walked with her straight into her mother’s kitchen. Mrs. Barclay sat darning the stocking which would have been Kirsty’s affair had she not been stalking Phemy. She took it out of her mother’s hands, and laid the girl in her lap.