"To read! Mr. McColl, I really am surprised at you! It is most dishonourable to read other people's letters," protested the girl, with great heat. "Surely! Surely! but yon's a postcard." From this position he refused to budge an inch, being backed up in it by Donald, who, being unable to read, was busy in stowing away various letters in different hiding-places in his person, with a view to their future safe delivery at the proper destination. "It was a ferry useful thing," he said, "was postcards, and if Miss Marjory would mind it wass, when old Mistress Macgregor died her sons wass sending to Oban for the whiskey to come by the ferry. But it wass the day before the buryin' that a postcard wass coming to say the whiskey was to be at the pier. But young Peter's cart wass going to the ferry to fetch the whiskey and he was meeting Peter and telling him of the postcard. So if it had not been for the postcaird it wass no whiskey they would be having to Mistress Macgregor's funeral, whatever." A judicious mingling of fact and fiction which outlasted Marjory's wrath. She put the cause of offence in her pocket, remarking pointedly that as Donald had such a budget of important news to retail, that would most likely be the quickest mode of delivery, and then turned to her task of giving the children their usual Sunday lesson, which she began with such a detailed homily on the duty towards your neighbour, that Mr. McColl took the excuse of Donald's departure to accompany him into the garden, and remain there until she passed on to another subject.