The old face furrowed up into a broad smile. "Well," he said, "I start for London to-night, but I hope we may meet again. I'll send Jenny in to see you. We are good comrades, she and I--we never enquire into each other's affairs." Mona found it rather difficult to give her full attention to Jenny's letters, interesting and characteristic as these were. One was addressed to a sailor brother; another to Maggie, and the latter was not at all unlike a quaint paraphrase of Polonius's advice to his son. The poor woman's mind was apparently ill at ease about the child of her old age. "I suld hae keepit her by me," she said. "She's ower young tae fend for hersel'; but it was a guid place, an' she was that keen tae gang, puir bit thing!" "I do think it would be well if you could get her a good place somewhere in the neighbourhood," said Mona; "and I should not think it would be difficult." "Ay, but she maun bide her year. It's an ill beginning tae shift ere the twel'month's oot. We maun e'en thole." But Jenny forgot her forebodings in her admiration of Mona's handwriting. "I can maist read it mysel'," she said. "Ye write lood oot, like the print i' the big Bible." CHAPTER XXIX. "YONDER SHINING LIGHT." Miss Simpson's shop had undeniably become one of the lions of Borrowness. An advertisement in the _Kirkstoun Gazette_ would have been absolutely useless, compared with the rumour which ran from mouth to mouth, and which brought women of all classes to see the novelties for themselves. Rachel had to double and treble her orders when the traveller came round, and it soon became quite impossible for her and Mona to leave the shop at the same time. "I find it a little difficult to do as you asked me about reading," Mona wrote to Mr Reynolds, "for the shop-keeping really has become hard work, calling for all one's resources; and my cousin naturally expects me to be sociable for a couple of hours in the evening. I keenly appreciate, however, what you said about beginning the work leisurely, and leaving a minimum of strain to the end; so I make it a positive duty to read for one hour a-day, and, as a general rule, the hour runs on to two. When my six months here are over, I will take a short holiday, and then put myself into a regular tread-mill till July; and I will do my very best to pass. What you said to me that night is perfectly true. I have read too much _con amore_, going as far afield as my fancy led me, and neglecting the old principle of 'line upon line; precept upon precept.' It certainly has been my experience, that _wisdom_ comes, but _knowledge_ lingers; and I mean this time, as a Glasgow professor says, to stick to a policy of limited liability, and learn nothing that will not pay. That is what the examiners want, and they shall not have to tell me so a third time!