"She has done that before," said Mrs. Melder. "Can ye make onything o' the words, Miss Anne? I hae gotten to ken the sound o' them, though neither Robert nor me can make ony sense o' the outlandish tongue. Lilie, my lamb, whisht, like a guid bairn, and dry your eyes. See what a bonnie book Miss Anne has brocht ye, and pictures in't! "There's mony o' the neighbors wonder at us," continued Mrs. Melder, as the child, when its fit of weeping was over, clambered up upon the table in the window, and sat there, in enjoyment of the picture-book, "for taking a bairn we ken naething about; and ye may think it foolish too, Miss Anne. But the house was waesome wi' Robert out a' day, and the bit thing had a pitiful look wi't, and the leddy--for she bid to be a leddy, though she was plain enough put on--pleaded wi' me in sic a way that I couldna withstand it; and we're clar o' a' loss, wi' the siller being in Mr. Foreman's hand; and the bairn--puir wee desolate thing, cast off by its ain bluid--is a fine bairn, now that she's learning to speak in a civilized tongue. My ain Bell, if the Almighty had spared her, would hae been about Lilie's age. Eh, Miss Anne! a young lady like you canna ken what a sore dispensation that was! But we maun hae our ain way." "And do you think the lady could be Lilie's mother?" said Anne, after a pause. "It's hard to say," said Mrs. Melder; "but I am maistly inclined to think no, Miss Anne, for ye see the bairn disna greet after her the way she did the now, when ye asked her wha came hame wi' her; and the leddy hersel, though she beggit me to be careful o' the bairn, did not keep her in her sight till the last moment, as a mother would have done; and when she went by the Mill, Robert says--for he was watching--that she never stopped to look back; sae I think she may have been a friend further off, Miss Anne, but she couldna be Lilie's mother." "Strange!" said Anne, "that any friend, above all a mother should send away a child so interesting!" "Ay, Miss Anne," said Mrs. Melder; "but the like o' you disna ken. There are bitterer things in this world than even grief.--One canna tell. It may be a shame and a disgrace to some decent family, that that wee thing, pleasant as she is, has ever drawn breath--and the lady may be some kin of the mother's, bringing it away out o' the sight o' kent folk and friends. The like of that is ower common. Eh, pity me! there's nae counting the wiles o' the enemy! There's Strathoran, ye see, and the gentlemen that's in't playing at their cartes and their dice, they tell me, on the very Sabbath day itsel! Is't no enough to bring a judgment on the country-side? If auld Strathoran--honest man--could but look down into his ain house now, I canna think but what it would make his heart sair--even _yonder_. He was a guid man, auld Strathoran, though he did put Mr. Bairnsfather into the parish." "Was that wrong, Mrs. Melder?" said Anne.