She went off herself, not sorry to be alone, feeling the squalor of the narrow streets through which she passed--like all people who are easily impressed by the absence of any beauty in life. She felt for the poor human beings who toiled so hard for such a bare and unlovely existence. The grey houses with their dirty, ill-kept doors, and the "common stairs," upon which went so many weary feet. In front, a bit of trodden-down mud and a black stream, in which dirty ducks and dirtier children paddled. Her spirits sank lower and lower. At length she arrived at the address she had got from Jean, and was asked to "walk up the stair" by a shock-headed girl, without any attempt at tidiness, "busy," and evidently imagining that in that fact lay excuse enough for all disregard of appearance. Jean, clean, trim, but with eyes that told their own tale of weeping, was scrubbing a floor; unaccustomed to such treatment, the shutters and woodwork all glistened, and the floor was nearly finished. It was one of the rooms, part kitchen, part bedroom, which you obtain in towns where overcrowding is the rule. The window was small and high up--worse than this, it could not open. "And is this your situation? This the place you were coming to, my poor dear Jean?" asked Mrs. Dorriman, in faltering tones. "'Deed, my dear, I may just say, without vanity, I could get mony a situation; but I am here working housekeeper to two lads--kin to myself, my dear. No one to hurry me or hinder me, and little to do. So little, I'll be often down bothering you." She spoke lightly, afraid of giving way. The sight of Mrs. Dorriman brought back all her own misgivings of the day before; when she had found herself in an airless room, with nothing but filth and dirt around her, and not a "kent face" near her. But Mrs. Dorriman must never know that she had made a sacrifice to be near her; and with a fair attempt at a laugh she said-- "You know, my dear, I was always ill to command. Better this than be under a mistress who might be a harder mistress than ever you were to do with." Mrs. Dorriman could not speak. She looked round the room to see in what way she could help to make things comfortable. She resolved that something should be done to the windows, and she noted other things. But the feeling uppermost in her mind was, that it would not be for long. Jean and herself--they would at no distant day wend their way back to the hill-side together. "And are you happy? Are you comfortable, my dear?" asked Jean, "How is it with you?" "I am comfortable, Jean, and have all to make me comfortable; but, like you, I miss the great purple hills, the life and light of the sea, the freedom and brightness of Inchbrae." "And yet you speak cheerfully, my dear;" and the poor woman looked wistfully at her former mistress.