“I don’t mean to use any word I ought not to use,” said Marjory, with her gracious smile, “but I hope you keep it up, that and your drawing. It is good to have such resources when one has only a quiet life to look forward to. Of course a gentleman has many ways of occupying himself; but I am so sorry my education has been neglected. When I am dull, there is scarcely anything I can do but read.” “I should not think you were ever dull,” said Hepburn, with adoring looks. “Not very often, just now; but some time probably I shall be, and then I shall envy you your resources. Will you dine with us at Pitcomlie to-morrow, Mr. Hepburn? I fear we shall be quite alone; but if you will take the trouble to come--and bring your--” “I will come with the greatest pleasure,” said the young man, precipitately, drowning that last objectionable request. He would take no music, he vowed, for any inducement which might be offered him. His right hand would make an effort to forget its cunning. He would give himself up to riding and shooting, and trudge about the ploughed fields in leather gaiters, like her father, and make a boor of himself, by way of proving to her that he was not a schoolboy nor a dilettante. This he vowed to himself as she went on smiling, and little Milly passed him like a gleam of light, rushing after her sister. How unlike these two were to anything else far or near! Marjory, with her little sister, was like a deep-hearted rose, not full blown, yet perfect--one of those roses which you can look down into, as into a lovely nest of colour and fragrance--with a tiny little bud just showing the pink on the same stem. Young Hepburn had a great deal of superficial poetry about him, and this was the image which came into his mind. Not full blown--keeping the form of a bud, deep, many-folded, odorous as the very soul of Summer. That was the similitude which best expressed Marjory Heriot to his mind. And she, laughing softly at him, wondering to herself what God could mean by making such men, deciding within herself that he would have made a nice sort of girl, pleasant and rather loveable, went on to the Manse, which indeed had been her destination all along. CHAPTER III.