"Then he is a bigger fool than I expected. Oh, don't get into a temper again. Those sudden shocks of color, child, show me that your heart is out of order. How can you expect to have a regular pulsation if you flare up at anything any one may say? Now go and fetch me your Highland cousin." Mairi came into the room in a very timid fashion, and stared with her big, light-blue eyes into the dusky recess in which the little old woman sat up in bed. Sheila took her forward: "This is my cousin Mairi, Mrs. Lavender." "And are you ferry well, ma'am?" said Mairi, holding out her hand very much as a boy pretends to hold out his hand to a tiger in the Zoological Gardens. "Well, young lady," said Mrs. Lavender, staring at her, "and a pretty mess you have got us into!" "Me!" said Mairi, almost with a cry of pain: she had not imagined before that she had anything to do with Sheila's trouble. "No, no, Mairi," her companion said, taking her hand, "it was not you. Mrs. Lavender, Mairi does not understand our way of joking in London. Perhaps she will learn before she goes back to the Highlands." "There is one thing," said Mrs. Lavender, observing that Mairi's eyes had filled the moment she was charged with bringing trouble on Sheila--"there is one thing you people from the Highlands seem never disposed to learn, and that is to have a little control over your passions. If one speaks to you a couple of words, you either begin to cry or go off into a flash of rage. Don't you know how bad that is for the health?" "And yet," said Sheila with a smile--and it seemed so strange to Mairi to see her smile--"we will not compare badly in health with the people about us here." Mrs. Lavender dropped the question, and began to explain to Sheila what she advised her to do. In the mean time both the girls were to remain in her house. She would guarantee their being met by no one. When suitable rooms had been looked out by Paterson they were to remove thither. The whole situation of affairs was at once perceived by Mrs. Lavender's attendant, who was given to understand that no one was to know of young Mrs. Lavender's being in the house. Then the old woman, much contented with what she had done, resolved that she would reward herself with a joke, and sent for Edward Ingram.