“Don’t sit in the corner and hum, hum, like that!” said Miss Jean promptly; “if you have a cold, Charlie, go to your bed, and be taken care of; but I cannot bide a hoasting man. We’re all in a hum, hum sort of way, Johnnie Hepburn. Go away quick and change your clothes, and come back to your dinner; we’ll be more amiable then; but come quick, for the fish will spoil; and Jess’s temper is none of the best. Lord preserve us all!” said Miss Jean, turning upon her companions with her hand uplifted, when he was gone. “That woman’s turned the laddie’s head, the first time he’s seen her! Now that’s the old-fashioned way that used to be in my day; and I respect the lad!” “You ought to respect the lady,” said Marjory. She was amused; but yet not altogether amused. Johnnie Hepburn, for whom in himself she had a sort of elderly sisterly regard, had been her slave since ever she could remember. He had teased Marjory, and been very troublesome to her on many occasions; but he had worshipped her at all times, never thinking of any other woman. Miss Heriot was very much inclined to laugh at his championship of Mrs. Charles; but her amusement was mingled with a surprise which, perhaps, was not altogether agreeable. She had seldom been more startled; and when he came back to dinner, and the lamplight showed his youthful countenance considerably flushed with haste, or emotion of some kind, the wonder grew. The half-pique of which she was conscious, and which amused her too in its way, made Marjory somewhat satirical. “So you found Mrs. Charles very nice?” she said, when they were at table, looking up with a twinkle of laughter, which had been long absent from them, in her eyes. “Nice?” said Hepburn, with hesitation. “Well, I do not know if that is the word I would use. It is touching to see a woman in her circumstances, so young and so----. She is very delicate, I think.” “She is very pretty, I think!” Marjory said, laughing. Hepburn could not tell how it was that the laugh sounded so much less pleasant to him than ordinary. Was she laughing at him? She had done so before now, and he had only worshipped her the more. But now he had just come from the spectacle of grief, borne in a becoming manner, and it seemed almost wrong of Marjory to be able to laugh; it disturbed his ideal. He took care to say as little as possible about Mrs. Charles for the rest of the evening, but still he did manage to intimate that he thought Marjory had not, perhaps, quite understood that delicate spirit. And Marjory replied that it was quite possible, but laughed again. Bell, the maid, was rather of Mr. Hepburn’s opinion--that Marjory’s capacity for laughter showed itself too soon.