There never was a more lamentable failure. Mrs Buchanan upstairs heard the ringing laugh break the silence, and then the new impulse of mirth made itself a voice. The good mother listened with a smile. Helen was moving about below. Helen was singing, and in another moment the gay voice and the light foot came upstairs, keeping time with each other in the pleasant caprice of a cheerful heart. Mrs Buchanan was working at a particular “fancy work” of her own. She was darning the carpet. The carpet had been new once, but that was so very many years ago, that it was growing aged now, and feeble like other things. There is a pleasure in doing what one knows one can do well. Mrs Buchanan had a modest pride in her skill for repairing these dilapidations of time; and the natural delicacy of mind which could not be at ease while there was anything ungraceful or imperfect around it, expressed itself after this homely fashion. She did not patronize finery at all, but the aesthetical feelings were delicately developed in the good mother’s mind nevertheless, and there was art in her darned carpet. “Will you come with me, mother, to the Waterside?” said Helen. “I must have this done: I don’t want to begin to it again, my dear,” said Mrs Buchanan, looking up from her work; “and besides, it is very frosty and cold, Helen; wrap yourself up as well as you can, and I will have a cup of tea for you when you come in again.” So Helen drew the shawl, which fortunately had been of very sober colours in its far-distant youth, over her merino gown, and tieing on her little straw bonnet with its plain brown ribbon, went down-stairs again, and out into the clear, chill November air. It was rather cold, but bright and exhilarating, and singing snatches of old songs under her breath, Helen went happily down the steps of the bridge till she reached the river-side, far down, towards the waterfoot. Yonder, quivering under the red, bold, frosty sun, the great Firth thrills through its full veins with the joyous impulse of life. Far away among some quiet clouds is Skiddaw and his humbler brother, vigilant, far-seeing, watching over “the English side,” as it slopes down, in the serene evening atmosphere, to the brink of the great waves; and there the winding Fendie water glides into the estuary, and cold at that point looks the round hillock from which the sun has quite withdrawn, while in the west that great bluff hill which defies Skiddaw has a glory on him almost too grand to look at, and the range of far-withdrawing hills, of which he is the last and greatest, open away in the distance, with cloudy peaks ascending behind, and clear intervals of sky, like lakes, between.