The excellent Doctor said this as a compliment to Mrs. Charles’s beauty, which precluded the idea of impertinence on her part. Mrs. Murray had not seen Mrs. Charles, and therefore was unaffected by her beauty, but she accepted the suggestion as possible. Marjory was no doubt hasty, and Miss Jean crabbed, and very likely “the young women at Pitcomlie” were only _gauches_--not intentionally disagreeable. But when Matilda entered, leaning on young Hepburn’s arm, Mrs. Murray was confounded. Johnnie Hepburn! he whose hopeless devotion to Marjory had been known over all the country--who had written verses under so thin a disguise that no one could possibly mistake it, to her, in the “Fifeshire Journal”--who had tormented all her friends with offers of service, and who finally had come here upon Marjory’s business a messenger from her! Matilda did not relinquish his arm till she had reached the centre of the room, when she performed a curtsey to her guests. “Excuse me if I put up my feet,” she said, as she placed herself on a sofa. The Minister’s wife could do nothing but sit and look at her, so entirely was she taken by surprise. Naturally it was Dr. Murray, as the most important person, who spoke first. “I hope you have quite recovered from the fatigues of your journey, Mrs. Charles Heriot?” he said. “Sad as it was, and sore as this home-coming must have been, I hope you have now settled down. It is a favourable time of year for this part of the country, and I may say, under Providence, that it’s a very good season. We have had more bright weather than ordinary, and everything is looking very well. I hope you are beginning to like your new home?” “Yes, I suppose it has been good weather for Scotland; but not at all like what we have been used to. I think sometimes I shall die of the cold,” and she muffled herself closely in the shawl which she had thrown off on coming in, “and the children feel it so very much.” “Oh, but it’s new life to the children, my dear! You’ll soon find that,” cried good Mrs. Murray, “though yours are very young to be sure. My eldest daughter’s children have just come to the Manse, from the Bombay Presidency. Poor things, they were white enough and miserable enough when they came, but since then they have flourished every day.” “Oh, indeed,” said Matilda, with a stare; “but my children have always been taken such care of; and they feel the cold very much.” As if our bairns were not well taken care of! Mrs. Murray said to herself, and she was wroth in her heart, and concluded that this was more than _gaucheréé_, whatever the Doctor might say. The Doctor was not quite so easily discouraged. “When you have been here a little longer,” he said, “and have got used to our ways, you will find it a pleasant neighbourhood--a very pleasant neighbourhood. St. Andrews is not too far for a drive, and there are a great many very agreeable families--”