“It’s no that,” said Isabell, “I’m doing you no wrong. You will be a mother to him, and he’ll ken no other mother; but I would like Miss Heriot to take him just once in her arms, just to give him a kiss for his father’s sake, just to see if he’s no like his father. If it was no more than that--no to take him from you that have the best right--” “My daughters, mem, are not civil to me,” said the old woman coming forward for the first time. “You hear the one say that’s it the other that has the best right; yet this bairn was born under my auld roof, and put first into my auld arms, me that bore his mother, and bred her up by the toil of my hands and the sweat of my brow. They think I’ve naething to do with it; that I’m to sit by and hear him given away from one to another and never say a word.” “It’s John and me,” said Agnes breaking in, “that can do best for the bairn.” “And who will love him best?” said the old mother, “you will have bairns of your ain. You will push him by and make no account of him. He will have the orphan’s fate. He will eat the bread of tears, he will have to bide in his corner, and haud his tongue, and walk wary, wary, lest worst should befall him.” Here Isabell turned with a cry to the unconscious infant at her side. They pierced her gentle soul with a hundred poisoned arrows without meaning it. Poor people do not build up foolish pictures of possible recovery round their dying up to the last moment, as some of us do. They never throw any sort of doubt upon that certain and near approaching termination. Not even a charitable suggestion that she might live to watch her child’s growth was made by any one; nor did Isabell expect it. Perhaps on the whole this was the most real kindness, and it was the only treatment she had ever been used to; but yet in her delicate soul, she felt the want of tenderness without knowing how it was. Meanwhile Marjory sat by bewildered, and listened to this dispute in confusion. She tried to interrupt them more than once, but their eager voices were too much for her. The strife was a generous strife in its way; but was it possible that they did not know if his mother’s marriage was proved what the child must become at once? She interposed at last as calmly as she could. “If all the proof is obtained that will be necessary,” she said, “if the marriage is proved, and everybody satisfied” (at these words Isabell turned round, took her hand and kissed it gratefully, while her mother retreated to the furthest corner, persistently shaking her head, and uttering sighs that were deep enough to be groans), “then I think our family will have to be consulted. It is not quite so simple as you think. There will be something also for us to do.” The old woman came back from her corner of the room, and Isabell turned wistful, smiling, beaming upon the speaker.