She had many relations in high places, and all who crossed her threshold were her life-long friends, eager to serve her, but she would accept pecuniary assistance from none of them. She and Elsa, the faithful servant and friend of some fifty years, cooked and washed and gardened, caught and groomed the shaggy pony in the little paddock, and cleaned the queer little carriage in which Miss Esperance used to drive into Edinburgh, with a shawl pinned over her bonnet, on cold days, to protect her ears. She and Elsa seldom tasted meat except on Sundays. "A man, my dear, is different," she would say, when chops were frizzling for Mr. Wycherly; but she always had a meal for a friend, and a good and daintily served meal it was! When you stayed with Miss Esperance, Elsa would put her head into your bedroom—it seemed in the small hours—demanding loudly, "Will ye tak’ a herring or an egg to your breakfast?" And you were wise if you chose the herring, for herrings "brandered" by Elsa were of a succulence unknown to ordinary mortals. It fell upon a time during Mr. Wycherly’s sojourn that one Archie, a young nephew of Miss Esperance, came to visit them, and in no time the jolly young middy, whose ship was anchored at Leith, had made a conquest of them, all three, with his youth, and good looks, and kindly, cheery ways. Mr. Wycherly heard that a first edition of "Beaumont and Fletcher" was to be seen at some bookseller’s in the new town, and set forth early with five pounds in his pocket, to see if he could secure such a find. The day waned, and still no Mr. Wycherly returned triumphant to display his treasure before the admiring eyes of Miss Esperance and "that vastly agreeable youth," as he styled Archie. Miss Esperance visibly grew more and more anxious, and Archie, who was quite ignorant of Mr. Wycherly’s "foible," wondered why his aunt should concern herself that a dignified middle-aged gentleman had not returned by five o’clock on a spring afternoon. So perturbed did she become that Archie volunteered to go and look for him. His aunt hesitated, then said slowly, "Dear Archie, I am not sure whether it would be right to let you go. You are very young, and poor dear Mr. Wycherly——" "Hoots, Miss Esperance," interrupted Elsa from the half-open door, where she had been listening in the most barefaced fashion, "just let the laddie gang: he is better suited to see after yon puir drucken body than you are yersel’!" With that blessed reticence which characterises all honest and well-disposed boys, Archie asked no questions. The whole situation "jumped to the eye"; so, kissing his aunt, he seized his jaunty cap and was gone before Miss Esperance recovered from her wonder and indignation at Elsa’s "meddling." Archie walked smartly, keeping a sharp lookout to right and left till he reached the outskirts of the town: but he met nobody other than an occasional drover.