Accordingly a message was brought to Primrose: ‘Young Mrs. Ramsay was very sorry, she was not able to see a stranger.’ But Primrose was more than a match for Jenny. The young lady had quite as much ready wit at her command as the woman owned. It would be strange if the powers of light did not sometimes overcome the powers of darkness. Primrose presented her compliments, and she too was very sorry to hear that her cousin’s lady was ailing. But it did not matter so much--Mrs. Ramsay need not put herself about, or exert herself when she was not fit for the exertion. She--Miss Ramsay--had walked out from Craigie with the intention of staying for a few days at her cousin’s house of Drumsheugh. If its mistress was not well enough to come down to her visitor to-day, no doubt Mrs. Ramsay would be better to-morrow or the next day. In the meantime Miss Ramsay could entertain herself, and her old friend Cunnings would see that she had everything she wanted. ‘Hech, sirs! hech, sirs! sirs the day!’ moaned Peggy, shrinking away in the fastness of her chamber from the most distant sight or sound of her deliverer. ‘Send the bauld cutty about her business. Bid her leave the hoose this minute,’ stormed Jenny. ‘Oh, I canna do that, Jenny,’ insisted the cowering Peggy. ‘Drumsheugh’s leddy cousin--she maun bide here as long as she likes, till he come back, if she takes it into her head, though I wonder what pleasure it can be to her to force herself in and sit in judgment on a puir lass like me. Oh, Jamie, Jamie! will you never come back and stand by me?’ ‘It’s no your chirming will bring him back. If he had wanted to come he might have been here long syne,’ said Jenny scornfully. ‘Peggy, tak your choice--either that insolent hempie maun gang, or me.’ ‘Jenny, Jenny, will you leave me, when the auld leddy engaged you to stay with me till she came back?’ implored the girl, to whose transparent mind infidelity to a pledge was simply incomprehensible. ‘How can I put Drumsheugh’s cousin to the door? It would come ill aff my hand; I could look neither him nor his mither in the face again if I were guilty of sic sauciness.’ ‘Then you’ve ta’en your choice, Peggy, my woman, and you maun abide by it,’ said Jenny, beginning instantly to gather together her ‘pickings’ and belongings. ‘It’s muckle gratitude I’ve gotten for a’ the trouble I’ve wared upon you. But you’ll maybe think on me, madam, when you’re in the hands of your gaoler. For Drumsheugh and his mither have sent you a rale gaoler at last, and it’s little pity she’ll ha’e on your fule tricks, you heartless gipsy.’ Jenny had the wisdom to anticipate defeat, and beat a masterly retreat, while the wretched Peggy was weeping and quailing, and abjectly beseeching her tyrant to reconsider her resolution. However, Jenny was not sufficiently prudent to avoid altogether an encounter with her adversary, in which Peggy’s ’cuzin’ came off second best.