‘Well,’ he said eagerly, ‘I’ve gear enough, and if I were to buy a place like this, and be a laird like Drumsheugh, you and me would never be equal in anything worth counting--never. Nobody kens that better than myself; but there would be less outward odds, less descent in the sight of the world for you.’ ‘Please yourself. I daresay it is very natural for a man to wish to have land of his own,’ she said, with the indulgent sympathy which was one of her chief charms. ‘Most natural for a man like you who would know and love every inch of his land, and spend his life in causing it to wave with corn. But if you please, I have my pride too, and I think I would rather stoop a little in outward show, if the world likes to call it stooping, than that you should be in a hurry to rax up (stretch violently) an idle fancy, to me. I would like fine to try what it is to be the gudewife of Balcairnie. I’ve a notion it would be a pleasant place to fill, to stand in your mither’s shoes, and be to you what she was to her gude man.’ In after years, when Primrose had long been the much-loved, much-honoured wife of Jock Home, and their love had room and to spare for merry jesting, he was wont to assure their daughters that he would never have presumed to approach their mother as a suitor if she had not given him the first word of encouragement. On the whole, Balcairnie and Primrose’s _mésalliance_--small by comparison, though, to be sure, it was a direct result of the first flagrant transgression of social laws, met with large tolerance. There were even persons, only slightly acquainted with the future bride, certainly, who maintained she had done very well for herself--‘a penniless lass with a long pedigree,’ white-faced, and small to boot, who had won so braw a bridegroom and so comfortable a down-sitting as Balcairnie. She had cut her own cloth when she was pretending to be looking after the interests of others. Even the old Lady of Drumsheugh grieved over the marriage principally because she was conscious that here too she had been to blame for the misadventure. And Primrose was so fine and generous a creature she deserved the very best match in the country, which, when it came to that, Primrose argued with spirit she had got. As for Primrose’s proper guardian, she would not have thought the Prince of Wales or the Duke of York good enough for her darling, so that it did not matter so much that Mrs. Purvis should resent the child’s infatuation, and experience a large amount of chagrin, which had to be tenderly borne with and persuaded away before the wedding could take place.