‘Well, you see, I could not let you be wronged, as Balcairnie told me you were wronged, and my cousin Jamie is the nearest man-body I have. Some day he or his son, if you bring him an heir, will walk at the head of my coffin as chief mourner at my funeral.’ ‘Na, na,’ interposed Peggy; ‘you’ll marry yoursel’--you’re bound to; and a man and bairns of your ain will lament you sair. But death and auld age are far awa’.’ ‘I dinna ken,’ said Primrose softly; ‘we do not all live to grow old, Peggy; my mother and father both died young. As for marrying,’ speaking a little more lightly, ‘we do not all marry either. I’m not bonnie, like you, and I’ve no tocher.’ ‘What a tocher you would be to any lucky lad who had the gude fortune to win you!’ cried Peggy ecstatically. ‘But he cannot ken that ere he set his heart on me,’ said Primrose naïvely. Then she went on to tell Peggy that the income of the elderly relative with whom Primrose stayed died with the annuitant. Primrose might be a very poor gentlewoman indeed, in a generation when there were few channels by which a gentlewoman could earn independence. She was often forced to think how anxiously she would have to pinch and scrape to secure a living in her old age, when she was ‘a single leddy,’ without even the small privilege of ‘a lass with a lantern,’ for her evening escort to the houses of better provided friends. While Peggy vowed in her heart that Primrose should never know such straits, since the best seat, the best room, and the most precious thing which Drumsheugh held must be at her command, young Mrs. Ramsay was made to understand that the sense of her loneliness, her lack of family ties, and her uncertain future often pressed heavily on Primrose. Yet this was the girl Peggy had always envied, because Primrose was so clever and helpful and blithe that she never entered a household without becoming quickly like sunshine there. It taught Peggy another, and that one of the most valuable, lessons she learned from her friend--the mingled warp and woof of which the web of human life is composed, the hard knots beneath the smooth surface. FOOTNOTES: [6] As an example of the rigid self-restraint, no less than the indefatigable self-devotion of one of these ladies, it is recorded that when a son was about to sail for India--a terrible exile then--and came in to say farewell, when he found her playing on her piano, she merely looked over her shoulder, nodded a ‘good-bye, my dear,’ and immediately turning resumed her tune, and played on till his last footstep had sounded in the avenue. CHAPTER X. ‘A’ WILL BE RICHT AGAIN WHEN JAMIE HE’S COME BACK.’