"Dear me! is that it?" said Mrs. Bairnsfather. "When I got the last note from Harrows I saw it was 'A. M. Coulter.' And that's it!" "Yes," said Mrs. Coulter. "Ada Mina--they are two very pretty names." Mrs. Bairnsfather coughed a short sarcastic cough of wonder, and Mrs. Coulter continued: "Oh! there is John beside little Miss Aytoun. Is he not like his father, Mrs. Bairnsfather? James, did you not say that Miss Aytoun was a relative of Mrs. Catherine's?" "Ay, my dear," said Mr. Coulter. "Mrs. Catherine told us so herself--you recollect? or was it to me she said it? So it was--when she was looking at yon new patent plough of John's." "I wonder," said Mrs. Bairnsfather, "who is likely to get the Tower? In the course of nature, it cannot be very long in Mrs. Catherine's hands, and it's a good estate." "Wonderfully improved in my time," said Mr. Coulter. "Mrs. Catherine is not without a notion of the science of agriculture, which, to the shame of landed proprietors, is generally so much neglected. The low lands at Oran Point were but moor and heather in my memory, but they grow as fine barley now as any in the country." "Well, I suppose no one can say that Mrs. Catherine neglects her carnal interests," said Mrs. Bairnsfather, with a professional sigh. Her husband was known among his shrewd parishioners to be greatly more observant of temporal than spiritual matters, and his wife, conscious of a failing in that respect, was wont to assume at times a technical solemnity. "I believe Mrs. Catherine is a very excellent woman in every respect," said the good-humored and uncensorious Mrs. Coulter, "and cares as little about money, for money's sake, as any one can possibly do; but she thinks it a duty to use well and improve what Providence has given her, as you do yourself, James, though, to be sure, we have more motive, with a young family rising round us." "I was very much struck yesterday," said Mr. Coulter, "with the contrast between the Tower fields, and the adjoining lands within the bounds of Strathoran. There is a place where the three estates meet--Mrs. Catherine's, Mr. Sutherland's and mine. You recollect the little burn, my dear, which that silly maid of yours fell into last Hallow-e'en? well, it is there. Mrs. Catherine's stubble-fields stretch to the very burnside--mine are turnips--uncommonly fine Swedes; but, on the other side, spreading away as far as you can see, is the brown moor of Strathoran, miles of good land wastefully lost, besides breeding by the thousand these small cattle of game, to destroy our corn." "Ay," said Mrs. Bairnsfather, mysteriously, "I hear the Sutherlands are not in the best way." "Poor things! they are young to be out in the world alone," said Mrs. Coulter; "and Isabel was a wilful girl at all times. I gathered from what Lewis Ross said, that they were living very gaily; but perhaps you have heard more?" Mrs. Bairnsfather shook her head.