She was a masculine-looking female, with hair of no particular shade parted over a face very red in color, and with high cheekbones and small gray eyes set at an angle like the Chinese folks. She was above sixty years of age at this time, with a terrible honesty of conduct, great violence of language, and carried things with a high hand wherever she went. Having heard of Nancy from Hugh Pitcairn four or five years before this, she had demanded to make her acquaintance, upon which Hugh fetched her over to tea one afternoon, and from that time forth she bore an unending grudge against me, that Nancy was not her own. "And so ye write," she had asked at this first interview; "I never read anything ye wrote, but I'm glad to meet in with any woman who has an aim 'beyond suckling fools and chronicling small-beer.' But ye must be careful what ye write, my dear," she went on, "or ye'll have the whole female population of Scotland clattering after ye. Be orthodox, and never trifle with tales concerning the seventh command. Stick to rhymes like 'fountain and mountain' and 'airy and fairy,' and such like things; for ye'll find that the women who tell tales that would make ye blush, who lead dissolute, unthinking lives, who deceive their husbands, and smell themselves up with Lily-of-the-Valley-water when they go to the kirk, will be the hardest upon ye if ye stray from any accepted thought. They require the correctest thinking in print ye know!" I never saw Nancy more pleased with any human being than with this fire-eating old lady; and when Janet finished her discourse by the statement, "God be praised! I never read poetry. Shakespeare sickened me of that. This thing of not saying right out what you mean turns my stomach. Padding out some lines to make them a bit longer, and chopping off ends of words to make others shorter, ought to be beneath any reasoning creature." Nancy put her head on the table and laughed until I was afraid she would make herself ill. It was after the luncheon, while Janet was still with us, that the Hon. Mrs. Erskine and her daughter came to pay us a visit of congratulation on the success of our entertainment. Danvers had gone off to walk, and so it fell upon the three of us to receive these visitors in the music-room, where we were having tea.