Peggy little guessed that the visit was destined to be often repeated, till it became almost a daily occurrence, brought about, as it was, by Jenny’s determined, deliberate design, Johnnie’s sloth and folly, Cunnings’s desperate self-indulgence, and Peggy’s humility and incapacity. But Peggy was only a troubled, frightened spectatress of those feasts, which were rapidly degenerating into orgies where Johnnie and Cunnings were concerned. Jenny herself was as sober a woman from inclination and policy as Peggy was in her innocence and purity. Many women of grosser nature, in Peggy’s position--raised suddenly from penury and frugality to what is to them luxury and lavish abundance, without work to do, destitute of any faculty for such duties as the women have to perform, without the smallest capacity for the poorest kind of intellectual recreation--sink piteously and repulsively into gulfs of gluttony and excess. But Peggy was secure from such hideous pitfalls--on which Jenny may have counted, by Providence, Peggy’s goodness, and the refinement which belonged, to be sure, to the core, and not to the surface of her nature. It was the season for Johnnie Puggie’s nephew making his spring rounds in the way of business, and Jenny was strongly bent at once on gratifying and benefiting him, and on raising herself in his estimation by proving the terms she was on at Drumsheugh. She persuaded Peggy that it would only be doing her duty and being barely hospitable if she invited young Baldie Puggie to spend a quiet evening at the house, during which he might let them see his ‘swatches,’ or patterns, and young Mrs. Ramsay might have the opportunity and pleasure of giving him a handsome order, for old acquaintance and kinship’s sake, since Drumsheugh did not stint his wife either in house-money or pocket-money. Peggy in her simplicity was rather pleased that she had one relation on her side of the house in so good a way as Baldie Fuggie, who wore a cloth coat, and could handle his knife and fork, and was almost a gentleman. He might rise to be ‘a merchant’ in his own person. He might sit down even now at the same table with Balcairnie and the laird, though his tone was not just like theirs, and he was not altogether without the traces of the pit whence he had been dug. Yes; she was glad to be able to grant Jenny’s request on Jenny’s account too. Peggy was ready to welcome Baldie Fuggie to a supper at Drumsheugh, and she would be proud to give him a lady-like commission. She must have a braw new gown in glad anticipation of Drumsheugh’s home-coming safe and sound. Her laird must see her at her best, so that all his admiration might revive, and he might fall in love with his wife afresh.