sewing on the buttons in an intensely happy dream. She baked a preparatory pie, pondering as anxiously over its ingredients as the eastern princess debated over her crucial cream tart with the pepper seasoning, and more impartial authorities than Primrose and Cunnings would have pronounced the feats highly creditable to their author. With innocent pride and exultation Peggy displayed the trophies of her prowess to Balcairnie. She showed the sark of Hollands fine, solemnly assuring him that she had put in every ‘steek’ herself, and gleefully boasting that she had a web of the same cloth bleaching on the green, and by the next summer she would have made a dozen of shirts to keep the laird well provided. She conducted her friend the yeoman into the larder, and invited him to break off a lump of the pie-crust and ‘pree’ it for himself. Having examined these two credentials of capable womanhood, which used to be demanded from every young girl before she passed into a young lady, that were often crowned by gratified parents with such substantial gifts as silk gowns or gold watches, he said with profound conviction, and the utmost approval: ‘Ay, Mrs. Ramsay, you’re a finished leddy now, and you may thank Miss Ramsay for it.’ He made a little obeisance to Primrose in his turn, and looked as if he felt certain that Peggy’s prosperous future was thenceforth secured. Primrose had grown very proud as well as fond of her pupil, after the visitor had by earnest representations induced the old relative with whom she usually dwelt, to grant her further leave of absence and suffer her stay at Drumsheugh to extend to many weeks. It happened to be Primrose’s first long visit from home after she was quite grown up. Therefore it formed an era in the girl’s life which might never be repeated. This was not foreboding an early death for Primrose, but she was no longer a school girl, and before travelling had been made easy, when it was still both hazardous to the person and a drain on the purse, friendly visits were not frequent though they might be long. Primrose and Peggy had laughed together over that famous marriage visit paid by the ‘heartsome lass,’ Miss Suff Johnstone, to the young matron the Countess of Balcarres, which lasted over a period of thirteen years. ‘I should like to give her safe out of my own hands, improved as she is, the dear lamb, into the hands of my cousin Jamie and my aunt,’ Primrose proposed to herself. ‘I wonder what they will think of her; if they will thank me. But I have done little; I had such good ground to work upon.’