None the less, although she made no honest effort to equal this model proposed for her example, did Baubie feel jealous and aggrieved. Her nature recognized other possibilities of expression and other fields of excellence beyond those afforded by the above-mentioned useful arts, and she brooded over her arbitrary and forcedly inferior position with all the intensity of a naturally masterful and passionate nature. It was all the more unbearable because she had no real cause of complaint: had she been oppressed or ill-treated in the slightest degree, or had anybody else been unduly favored, there would have been a pretext for an outbreak or a shadow of a reason for her discontent. But it was not so. The matron dispensed even-handed justice and motherly kindness impartially all round. And if the lassie Grant's excellences were somewhat obtrusively contrasted with Baubie's shortcomings, it was because, the two children being of the same age, Mrs. Duncan hoped to rouse thereby a spark of emulation in Baubie. Neither was there any pharisaical self-exaltation on the part of the rival. She was a sandy-haired little girl, an orphan who had been three years in the refuge, and who in her own mind rather deprecated as unfair any comparison drawn between herself and the newly-caught Baubie. Day followed day quietly, and Baubie had been just a week in the refuge, when Miss Mackenzie, faithful to her promise, called to inquire how her _protegee_ was getting on. The matron gave her rather a good character of Baubie. "She's just no trouble--a quiet-like child. She knows just nothing, but I've set her beside the lassie Grant, and I don't doubt but she'll do well yet; but she is some dull," she added. "Are you happy, Baubie?" asked Miss Mackenzie. "Will you try and learn everything like 'Lisbeth Grant? See how well she sews, and she is no older than you." "Ay, mem," responded Baubie, meekly and without looking up. She was still wearing 'Lisbeth Grant's frock and apron, and the garments gave her that odd look of their real owner which clothes so often have the power of conveying. Baubie's slim figure had caught the flat-backed, square-shoulder form of her little neighbor, and her face, between the smooth-laid bands of her hair, seemed to have assumed the same gravely-respectable air. The disingenuous roving eye was there all the time, could they but have noted it, and gave the lie to her compressed lips and studied pose. That same day the Rob Roy tartan frock made its appearance from the wash, brighter as to hue, but somewhat smaller and shrunken in size, as was the nature of its material for one reason, and for another because it had parted, in common with its owner when subjected to the same process, with a great deal of extraneous matter. Baubie saw her familiar garb again with joy, and put it on with keen satisfaction.