Angus is in a mental fever, and dashes about, here, there, and everywhere, without apparent reason, and also without much consideration. I mean consideration in both senses--reflection, and forbearance. Flora is grave and anxious--I think, a little frightened, both for herself and Angus. Mr Keith takes the affair very seriously; that I can see, though he does not say much. Annas seems (now that the first excitement is over) as calm as a summer eve. We are to start, if possible, on Friday, and sleep at Hawick the first night. "Hech, Sirs!" was Helen's comment, when she heard it. "My puir bairns, may the Lord be wi' ye! It's ill setting forth of a Friday." "Clashes and clavers!" cries Sam, turning on her. "Helen Raeburn, ye're just daft! Is the Lord no sae strang o' Friday as ither days? What will fules say neist?" "Atweel, ye may lauch, Sam, an' ye will," answered Helen: "but I tell ye, I ne'er brake my collar-bone of a journey but ance, and that was when I'd set forth of a Friday." "And I ne'er brake mine ava, and I've set forth monie a time of a Friday," returned Sam. "Will ye talk sense, woman dear, gin women maun talk?" I do feel so sorry to leave Abbotscliff. I wish I were not going to London. And I do not quite like to ask myself why. I should not mind going at all, if it were only a change of place. Abbotscliff is very lovely, but there is a great deal in London that I should like to see. If I were to lead the same sort of life as here, and with the same sort of people, I should be quite satisfied to go. But I know it will be very different. Everything will be changed. Not only the people, but the ways of the people. Instead of breezy weather there will be hot crowded rooms, and instead of the Tweed rippling over the pebbles there will be noisy music and empty chatter. And it is not so much that I am afraid it will be what I shall not like. It will at first, I dare say: but I am afraid that in time I shall get to like it, and it will drive all the better things out of my head, and I shall just become one of those empty chatterers. I am sure there is danger of it. And I do not know how to help it. It is pleasant to please people, and to make them laugh, and to have them say how pretty, or how clever you are: and then one gets carried away, and one says things one never meant to say, and the things go and do something which one never meant to do. And I should not like to be another of my Aunt Dorothea! I do not think there is half the fear for Flora that there is for me. She does not seem to get carried off her mind's feet, as it were: there is something solid underneath her. And it is not at all certain that Flora will be there. If she be asked to stay, Uncle says, she may please herself, for he knows she can be trusted: but if Grandmamma or my Aunt Dorothea do not ask her, then she goes on with Annas to her friends, who, Annas says, will be quite delighted to see her.