‘No, I’m not laughing, and there is no condescension. I’ll never laugh at you,’ answered Primrose a little gravely; and then she went on cheerfully, ‘When we come to know each other better, I’m sure we’ll be good friends, and you’ll not suspect me of laughing at you in that sense again.’ Peggy stood rebuked without being chidden, and somehow her crushed spirit rose a little under the rebuke. She began to look Primrose in the face with timid satisfaction, and to proceed to ask her to sit down and try to make her comfortable, as Peggy had been wont, in the few happy moments after her marriage, to busy herself modestly with Drumsheugh and Mrs. Ramsay. CHAPTER IX. THE LESSONS THAT PRIMROSE GAVE WHILE BALCAIRNIE LOOKED ON. Even Primrose, who was of a hopeful disposition, with some well-placed confidence in her social powers, had wondered what she could get to say to Peggy in the intercourse which must follow, and Peggy had been in mortal terror at the appalling necessity of making conversation for Miss Ramsay. But after the first ten minutes the talk became wonderfully easy between these two honest, single-hearted, gentle souls, though they were on different levels of intelligence and education. Peggy was entranced by what Primrose could tell of her early visits to Drumsheugh--including innumerable anecdotes of the young laird. Why, Primrose was the first intimate friend and equal--like a sister of Drumsheugh’s--whom Peggy had ever known, who could and would give the loving girl--pining for talk of Drumsheugh in his absence--welcome, though not very recent information concerning him. Primrose, in her turn, enjoyed drawing forth Peggy’s tales of her school days, when she had been the little class-fellow of both Drumsheugh and Balcairnie. Gradually and almost inadvertently Peggy passed in her talk from her school to her home and her mother. When she would have stopped, abashed, recollecting with tingling cheeks and a pang at her heart that her husband and his mother had not cared for her recalling these tender associations, she found, to her deep, ineffaceable gratitude, that it was otherwise with Primrose Ramsay. ‘Tell me about your mother, Peggy; I like to hear about mothers--I think all the more because I have not been so favoured as you. I never knew my mother; she died when I was a child in arms. But your talk helps me to judge what my mother would have been like--is like. For our mothers are both alive, and we’ll see them yet in Heaven,’ Primrose introduced a new _régime_ at Drumsheugh--a reign of order and diligence, peace and prosperity. And in place of its being opposed by Peggy or proving distasteful to her, it was hailed and clung to by her with breathless, well-nigh pathetic eagerness. She was so desirous, when the least prospect of attainment was held out to her, of being a good wife, a mistress of Drumsheugh of whom its old owners need not be altogether ashamed.