But when Drumsheugh leapt from the chaise and took his wife in his arms, he said the very reverse, though he had not even heard his mother’s comment, and had no thought of contradicting her. ‘I’m glad to find my Peggy the same,’ he said fervently, ‘the very same as when I left her. I’m far gladder of that than to be at hame again, though that is good, too. I have not seen any leddy like you, Peggy, my doo, since I quitted Drumsheugh.’ Peggy looked uplifted to the sky as at the very words she would have liked best to hear. ‘The ungrateful man!’ said Primrose Ramsay to Balcairnie, when the two were comparing notes together in the recess of one of the drawing-room windows before he left. ‘The ungrateful woman!’ after all I have done to make her liker him and her place henceforth.’ He was not sure whether she was most in jest or earnest, and there was a strain of wistfulness in his reply. ‘But did you not see how his speech pleased her, Miss Ramsay? She would rather have been told she was the same to him than that she had grown like the queen on the throne; yet she would not have been the same to him if she had not changed with the weeks and months, thanks to you. Do you hear me, madam, or do you suppose I’m contradicting myself? He has been learning, almost without his knowledge, to see her with other een all the time he has been away, and if she had come upon him, just as she used to be, he would have been startled and flegged. It is these other een which the improvement in her fits so well, that he was as proud and happy as a king to see at a glance she was as bonnie and dear to him as ever. Except for you, Miss Ramsay, this gude end would never have come to pass.’ ‘I’m afraid you’re a flatterer, Balcairnie,’ said Primrose demurely. ‘Na, na,’ he said hastily, with some trouble and agitation laying hold of him, in consequence of her accusation, ‘I have no saft words. I’m but a yeoman-farmer. Nobody’s likely to ettle to rub me down--or up,’ he finished, a little sorely. ‘Don’t let them, if there is anybody so conceited and impertinent as to try,’ she said quickly, with a curious tone of half-smothered indignation against him rather than against herself, mingling with her half fun; ‘there is no call for it. You are best as you are; you could not be better. But why do you let me speak like that? Why do you need to be told such a plain truth?’ A rush of colour flew into his face, a glow into his eyes; still he paused doubtfully, as at news too good to be believed. ‘Forgive me for being a gowk,’ he said humbly, ‘but do you really mean I could not be better to you, Miss Ramsay?’ She bit her lips, frowned, laughed, and nodded, while she grew as red as fire herself. ‘Why do you make me say and do such things?’ she repeated, with an impatient tap of her foot.