When people did notice young Mrs. Ramsay, everybody was struck by the change in her, and the immense advance she had made. She was becoming quite presentable, and like the rest of the world. Poor young thing! after all she had always been modest and harmless, though she had been a cotter’s daughter and a field worker not two years ago. Her elevation had been the fault of Drumsheugh and Balcairnie, as Drumsheugh’s own mother had said. Mrs. Forsyth herself made her appearance at Drumsheugh, acknowledging by her presence there some glimmering suspicion that a fresh mild sun might be about to rise on the social horizon. ‘You have worked wonders,’ she said to her old friend. ‘I believe I could bid young Mrs. Ramsay to my house to tea now, without fear of how she might behave and what folk would say. Still, it was a great risk, and I cannot acquit you of much imprudence in exposing yourself to it.’ ‘I am not so foolish as to ask your acquittal, Kirsty,’ said Primrose, ‘and we are not out of the wood yet. Take care that you do not run into danger yourself. My cousin Peggy might help herself and drain your tea-pot.’ Primrose was provoked into a hit at the private parsimony which was already the weak point of Kirsty Forsyth’s housekeeping ‘Do you know what Mrs. Jamie said to me when we were speaking the other night of the dancing-school ball at Craigie, and I was remarking that if Drumsheugh had been at home we might all have graced it? “I might have tried a reel or even a country dance,” she ventured to promise, “but a high dance I would not have attempted.” Yet, if it had not been going out of fashion, so that she might have danced it at the wrong time and place, seeing that she does not know all the outs and ins of society, poor dearie, I would have engaged to instruct her to walk through a _minuet de la cour_ ravishingly.’ ‘Primrose, you are out of your mind or fey,’ said Mrs. Forsyth angrily, for to dance a _minuet de la cour_ ravishingly had been till quite lately the height of polite accomplishments. Primrose was not always in a merry mood. Like most fine characters, hers had a pensive side, which it remained for Peggy to find out. ‘Why do you take so much trouble with me, cousin Primrose?’ inquired the young wife in one of her paroxysms of gratitude. ‘Because I like you so well, my lassie,’ answered Primrose promptly. ‘I’m real fond of you--as fond as though you had been the sister I never possessed, and that is saying something. I would have liked a brother--a big, blustering, fleeching chield of a brother--to order me about and make a stir in the house. But oh! Peggy, I would fain have had a sister. I would have had a great work either with an elder or a younger sister.’ ‘But when you first kenned me?’ urged Peggy.