“Will ye no stay, Kirsteen, and break bread in my house? You might do that and say nothing about it. It would be no harm to hide an innocent thing that was just an act of kindness, when you get home. If I am never to get more from my own family,” cried Anne, “but to be banished and disowned as if I were an ill woman, surely a sister that is young and should have some kind thought in her heart, might do that. Ye need say nothing of it when you get home.” “I will maybe never get home more,” said Kirsteen overcome at last by the feeling of kindred and the need of sympathy. “Oh, lassie,” cried Anne, “what have ye done? What have ye done?--And where are ye going?--If ye have left your home ye shall bide here. It’s my right to take care of you, if ye have nobody else to take care of ye, no Jean Macgregor, though she’s very respectable, but me your elder sister. And that will be the first thing David will say.” “I am much obliged to you,” said Kirsteen, “but you must not trouble your head about me. I’m going to London--to friends I have there.” “To London!” cried Anne. There was more wonder in her tone than would be expressed now if America had been the girl’s destination. “And you have friends there!” Kirsteen made a lofty sign of assent. She would not risk herself by entering into any explanations. “It’s a long journey,” she said, “and a person never can tell if they will ever win back. If you are really meaning what you say, and that I will not be in your way nor the doctor’s I will thankfully bide and take a cup of tea with ye--for it’s not like being among strangers when I can take your hand--and give a kiss to your little bairns before I go.” Anne came quickly across the room and took her sister in her arms, and cried a little upon her shoulder. “I’m real happy,” she said sobbing; “ye see the bairns, what darlin’s they are--and there never was a better man than my man; but eh! I just yearn sometimes for a sight of home, and my poor mother. If she is weakly, poor body, and cannot stand against the troubles of this world, still she’s just my mother, and I would rather have a touch of her hand than all the siller in Glasgow--and eh, what she would give to see the bairns!” Kirsteen, who was herself very tremulous, here sang in a broken voice, for she too had begun to realize that she might never again see her mother, a snatch of her favourite song: “True loves ye may get many an ane But minnie ne’er anither.” “No, I’ll not say that,” said Anne. “I’ll not be so untrue to my true love--but oh, my poor minnie! how is she, Kirsteen? Tell me everything, and about Marg’ret and the laddies and all.”