"Oh! I do so long to be well, Archie." "And the sheep, Archie?" continued poor Kenneth. "I've dreamed about them so often since I've been sick. I always see them lookin' up, Archie, with their bonnie brown een" (eyes), "and wonderin' what has come of me. And I'm sure Kooran wants to see them." "Kooran could see them any day, and they're doin' finely, but Kooran won't leave you." "Dear me, what shall I do?" cried Archie's mother, running distractedly up the garden with a bucketful of greens in her hand. To have seen her half-scared looks, one would have imagined something terrible was about to happen. "Gentry coming, and I'm no' dressed." The gently arrived about five minutes afterwards, little Jessie, Miss Gale, and Miss Grant. As soon as she found herself on the garden path Jessie, who had a bunch of primroses in her hand, and some long drooping crimson-tipped twigs from the larch, started to run. But she paused half-way, and an expression of sadness stole over her face, as she noticed how wan and white Kenneth was looking. She advanced more slowly and tendered the flowers. "Poor boy!" she said; "are you very, very ill?" Kenneth took the flowers, and a flush of joy lit his pale cheeks as he replied,-- "Not now, Miss Jessie. The doctor says I have nothing to do but get well." "Oh, I'm so glad," cried Jessie. Her governess now came up, and Miss Grant. The latter had been often before to see the invalid, but Jessie and Miss Gale had only recently arrived from Inverness-shire, and were loud in their praises of its magnificent scenery. Archie went and brought a chair for Jessie, so that she could sit while she talked to the invalid boy. Archie was improving. He even spoke to Jessie to-day, and promised to bring her something very nice if she would accept it. The something very nice ultimately proved to be a young hedgehog, so young that its spines had only just turned hard. Presently the ladies went into the keeper's cottage. Archie lay down on the gravel-path with his head on Kooran's neck, and Jessie sat and talked to Kenneth. What was she telling him? He looked intensely interested. His eyes were dilated, his hands clasped, his face flushed. It was but a simple story she was telling him, told in simple child's language. The story of her own London life, her life in society. But it was all, all so new to Kenneth. Ah! little did innocent Jessie know that her prattle had lighted the fires of ambition in that boy's soul. But so it was. She had inaugurated a new phase in his existence. She had inadvertently led him to see that there were other--can I say better worlds than his? So Jessie went away, with many a promise to come again when he was stronger, and could play soft melodies on the flute,--melodies, she said, that made her feel she wanted to cry, but that she loved all the same. Jessie went away. She had found the boy on this bright lovely spring morning but a boy; she left him a man at heart.