“Eh!” exclaimed a voice corresponding to the feet, as Hector Maxwell of Firthside and his brother came up out of breath; “it’s Miss Buchanan--I knew it was Miss Buchanan--and she’s droukit. Here’s my plaid--take my plaid, Miss Buchanan! We’ve run a’ the road from the brae, because we saw you on the Marsh, and if you had just waited--” Hector looked indignantly at the little heavy Tammie, and in great haste threw off his plaid. “Miss Buchanan will not be much better with your plaid, Hector,” said Mr Oswald; “she must take my umbrella; it will be more serviceable, and not so heavy.” Helen answered the somewhat constrained politeness with a little bow. “Thank you, Hector; but you would be very wet before you got home, if I took your plaid from you.” “But I’m no heeding,” said the generous Maxwell. Hector did not need to brush up his English for Helen; she was not so easily shocked as his sister. “And I shall soon be home,” said Helen. “I must go with these children, you know, and see that they are not scolded; and I am wet already. Come, Tammie. Hector, good-night.” Helen looked up into the banker’s face, and her natural frankness struggled for a moment with her shy pride. She was almost inclined to say that she would share his umbrella if he pleased, and the next moment she thought she would say nothing; but finally there was a compromise. “Good-night, Mr Oswald,” said Helen, as she took little Tammie’s hand. “We are going the same way,” said the embarrassed banker; and so they did; and amicably under shelter of one umbrella, with little Jeanie and her brother getting very muddy and wet at their feet, the banker Oswald and Helen Buchanan walked side by side towards the cheerful lights of Fendie. Mr Oswald cleared his throat; he rather wanted to begin a conversation, but he did not very well know how. If this young lady was to be Mrs Insches, the good man said to himself plausibly, it was very necessary that he should at least be acquainted with her; but certain it is that with no other prospective Mrs Insches would Mr Oswald have felt himself so uncomfortably conscious. He made a beginning at last on the easiest subject. “How foolish people are to permit their children to stray out on that Marsh!” “It is the fault of the bairns themselves,” said Helen. The banker remembered that Miss Swinton, Hope’s oracle, applauded our natural Scottish tongue, and it was rather a pretty word, “bairns.” In another person he would have thought it vulgar, perhaps, but no one could call that low voice, with its changeful modulations, vulgar, and he began to like listening to it. “Jeanie is afraid her mother will be angry; but when she sees them so wet, she will forget their misdemeanour, I hope.”