“And what for no?” said Anne, holding herself very erect “Ye speak like an ignorant person, like one of them that has a prejudice against doctors. There’s no greater mistake.” “I was meaning no such thing,” cried Kirsteen eagerly. “Well, ye spoke like it,” said Anne. “And where would we all be without doctors? It’s them that watches over failing folk, and gives back fathers and mothers to their families, and snatches our bonny darlings out of the jaws of death. Eh! if ye knew as much about doctors as I know about them,” she cried with a panting breath. “I am sorry if I said anything that was not ceevil,” said Kirsteen; “it was without meaning. Doctors have never done anything for my mother,” she added with an impulse of self-justification. “And whose blame is that? I know what David ordered her--and who ever tried to get it for her? He would have taken her to his own house, and nursed her as if she had been his own mother,” cried Anne with heat. Kirsteen with difficulty suppressed the indignation that rose to her lips. “Him presume to consider my mother as if she were his own!” Kirsteen cried within herself. “He was a bonny one!” And there fell a little silence between the two sisters seated on opposite sides of the fire. After a while Anne spoke again, hesitating, bending across the lively blaze. “Were ye, maybe, coming,” she said with an effort, “to tell me--to bring me a--message?” Kirsteen saw by the dancing light her sister’s eyes full of tears. She had thought she was occupied only by the babies and the changed life, but when she saw the beseeching look in Anne’s eyes, the quivering of her mouth, the eager hope that this visit meant an overture of reunion, Kirsteen’s heart was sore. “Alack,” she said, “I have no message. I am just like you, Annie. I have left my home and all in it. I’m a wanderer on the face of the earth.” “Kirsteen!” Anne sprang to her sister and clasped her in her arms. “Oh, my bonny woman! Oh, my Kirsty!” She pressed Kirsteen’s head to her breast in a rapture of sympathetic feeling. “Oh, I’m sorry and I’m glad. I canna tell ye all my feelings. Have ye brought him with you? Where is he, and who is he, Kirsteen?” Kirsteen disengaged herself almost roughly and with great though suppressed offence from her sister’s arms. “If ye think there is any he in the maitter, ye are greatly mistaken,” she said. “If ye think I would take such a step for such a motive.” Anne drew back wounded too. “Ye need not speak so stern--I did it myself, and I would not be the one to blame you. And if there’s a better reason I don’t know what it is. What reason can a young lass have to leave her hame, except that there’s one she likes better, and that she’s bid to follow, forsaking her father and mother, in the very Scripture itself?”