“Me take you up quick? I do nothing but try to please you. But I know how it is, Ronald. You think shame of Luckie Buchanan. She burns your bird, and she does your chop in the frying-pan, and her kettle is not half boiled. Young men are very badly treated in their lodgings. I know very well. Uncle Robert’s men that came to see him were always complaining, and they were old men that could make their curries themselves and drive womenfolk desperate, whereas you’re only young and would think shame to look as if you cared. I wonder if she brushes your clothes right, and gives you nice burnished boots, as you like them to be,” said Lily, with a critical look at the sleeve of his coat, which she was smoothing down with her hand. “You will make me think myself a terrible being, taken up with my own wants,” he said in a vexed tone. “It is me that am taken up with your wants,” she said, “and what more right than that--a man’s wife! What is the good of her but to look after her man! And when I cannot do it for failure of circumstances, not good will, then I must just ask and plague you till you tell me there’s nothing more for me to do--till the term comes, and I go home to my place,” cried Lily, with a laugh, but with two tears, which she turned away her head that he might not see. “It’s my first place!” she cried. “You cannot wonder I am excited about it, Ronald; and I hope I will give you satisfaction--Beenie and me!” Next morning Lily got up without, as appeared, any cloud on her face, and gave him his breakfast, and saw to the packing of his bag, and that his big coat was well strapped on to Sandy’s shoulders, who was to walk into the town with him and carry his small belongings. “You will not want it walking, but you will want it in the coach,” she said, “and be sure you keep yourself warm, for, though it’s March, the wind is terrible cold over the moor; and here is a scarf to put round your neck for the night journey. It will keep you warm, and it will mind you of me.” “Do I want that to mind me of my Lily?” he said reproachfully. “No, after I have been giving you such a taste of my humors, and you know I am not just the good thing you thought. But you might be more grateful for my bonnie scarf that I took out of the lavender to give you to wrap round your throat at night! And it is a very bonnie scarf,” said Lily; “look at the flowers worked upon it, the same on both sides, and as soft as a dove’s feathers that are of silver. You will put it round your neck and say Lily gave me this; and then at Whit-Sunday, when I take up my place, I will find it again, laid away in some drawer, and I will take it back, and it will belong then both to you and me.”