“Did ye speak of chances for me?” cried Kirsteen in youthful fury. “Me that would not look at one of them, if it was the prince out of the story book. Me that--!” She turned away to dash a hot tear from her dazzling wet eyes--“me that am waiting for him!” Kirsteen said in her heart. Her faithful champion looked at her with anxious eyes. “If she would but say that’s what she’s meaning,” was Marg’ret’s commentary. “Eh, I wonder if that’s what she’s meaning? but when neither the ane nor the ither says a word, how is a person to ken?” It slightly overclouded her triumph to think that perhaps for her favourite the chances were all forestalled, and even that trouble might come out of it if somebody should throw the handkerchief at Kirsteen whom her father approved. The cold chill of such an alarm not seldom comes across the designer of future events when all has been carefully arranged to quicken the action of Providence. But Marg’ret put that discouraging alarm hastily out of her mind. Right or wrong it was always a good thing that her nurslings should see the world. When the roll of white muslin arrived that was to make the famous gowns, and when Miss Macnab (who was not without claims in some far-away manner to be connected with a family in as near as the tenth remove from the Laird of Macnab’s own sovereign race) came over with her little valise, and her _nécessaire_ full of pins and needles, and was put into the best room, and became for the time the centre of interest in the household--Marg’ret could scarcely contain herself for pleasure. “A’ the hoose” with the exception of the boys, who at this stage of their development counted for little, snatched every available moment to look in upon Miss Macnab--who sat in state, with a large table covered with cuttings, and two handmaids at least always docile beside her, running up gores or laying hems. It might be thought, indeed, that the fashion of that time required no great amount of labour in the construction of two white dresses for a pair of girls. But Miss Macnab was of a different opinion. She did not know, indeed, the amount of draping and arranging, the skill of the artist in the fine hanging of folded stuffs, or even the multitudinous flouncings of an intermediate age into which the art of dress was to progress. The fashions of 1814 look like simplicity itself; the long, straight, narrow skirt, the short waist, the infantile sleeves, would seem to demand little material and less trouble for their simple arrangement. But no doubt this was more in appearance than in reality, and the mind of the artist is always the same whatever his materials may be. Miss Macnab kept the young ladies under hand for hours fitting every line--not folds, for folds there were none--so that the skirt might cling sufficiently without affording too distinct a revelation of the limbs beneath, an art perhaps as difficult as any of the more modern contrivances.