Mrs. Forsyth was a tall, blooming, consequential bride, to whom, at the first glance, her friend served as a foil. Dr. Forsyth was a brisk, busy, aspiring young man, well pleased with the attainment of some of his aspirations. The couple did the honours of their new home, where everything was fresh, bright, and hopeful, pleasantly to the young lady visitor Primrose. She entered with heart and soul into all their sanguine plans and projects, and so relished them in turn with her wholesome young appetite. She had her share of the marriage-parties, the teas and suppers, which were not yet over for the pair. She drove, bodkin-fashion, between the two, in the doctor’s gig, without any loss to their gentility, far and near to these blithe, yet decorous, merry-makings. She could not execute half so well as the bride could a lesson in classic music on any spinnet which presented itself handily, but Primrose beat her friend hollow in playing without a music-book tunes to which feet could keep time in carpet dances. She had her own song, which she was always asked to give after supper, and which never failed to elicit well-merited applause, for she had a sweet, tolerably trained voice, and sang with feeling and taste. Strange to say, her song was the old ballad ‘Huntingtower,’ and its echoes used to wake in the singer dim, contradictory associations with Jamie Ramsay and his miserable _mésalliance_. Did the other ‘Jamie’ of the song go away lightly after all, and leave the peasant bride to whom, in the first brush of the affair, he gave Blair-in-Athole, Little Dunkel’, St. Johnstown’s Bower, and Huntingtower, and all that was his so freely, to bear the brunt of their foolish wedlock? Did the ‘Jeannie’ who refused so decisively the braw new gown ‘wi’ Valenciennes trimmed roun’, lassie,’ that subtle allurement to a woman’s heart, and claimed only the heart which was hers already, who with unwavering voice, though her heart-strings were cracking, bade her cruelly jesting, unfairly suspicious lover, ‘gae hame’ to the wife and the bairnies three he invented to torture and try her, pass in the sequel and in the natural order of things into such a wasteful, reckless, low-lifed woman as Peggy Ramsay was turning out? Had true love no real foundation? Was there a canker at its core, sure to come to light in the end, even when it seemed most genuine and generous? Primrose and Mrs. Forsyth worked and read, walked and talked together, so as to have little time to weary, even when the doctor was too much engaged to attend to them, or was sent for to some distant patient. The ladies drew, and embroidered ruffles, caps, and aprons for themselves--the favourite fancy-work of the day after work of necessity in steady, solid gown and shirt making was disposed of.