Elspeth was "general servant" at my great-grandmother's. Her aunt Mary had come from Scotland to serve "Miss Victoire" when she first married. As Mary's health failed, and she grew old, her young niece was sent for to work under her. Old Mary died with her hands in my great-grandmother's, and Elspeth reigned in her stead. Elspeth was an elderly woman when I first made her acquaintance. She had a broad, bright, sensible face, and a kindly smile that won me to her. She wore frilled caps, tied under her chin; and as to exchanging them for "the fly-away bits of things servants stick on their heads at the present time," Elspeth would as soon have thought of abandoning the faith of her fathers. She was a strict but not bitter Presbyterian. She was not tall, and she was very broad; her apparent width being increased by the very broad linen collars which spread, almost like a cape, over her ample shoulders. My great-grandmother had an anecdote of me connected with this, which she was fond of relating. "And what do you think of Elspeth, little one?" she had said to me on the first evening of my visit. "I think she's very big," was my reply. "Certainly, our good Elspeth is as wide as she is tall," said my great-grandfather, laughing. I wondered if this were so; and when my great-grandmother gave me a little yard-measure in a wooden castle, which had taken my fancy among the treasures of her work-box, the idea seized me of measuring Elspeth for my own satisfaction on the point. But the silken measure slipped, and caught on the battlements of the castle, and I lost my place in counting the figures, and at last was fain to ask Elspeth herself. "How tall are you, Elspeth, please? As much as a yard?" "Ou aye, my dear," said Elspeth, who was deeply engaged in darning a very large hole in one of my great-grandfather's socks. "As much as two yards?" I inquired. "Eh, no, my dearie," said Elspeth. "That wad be six feet; and I'm not just that tall, though my father was six feet and six inches." "How broad are you, Elspeth, please?" I persisted. "As much as a yard?" "I'm thinking I will be, my dear," said Elspeth, "for it takes the full width of a coloured cotton to cut me a dress-front, and then it's not over-big." "Are you as broad as two yards, do you think?" I said, drawing my ribbon to its full length from the castle, and considering the question. Elspeth shook her head. She was biting the end off a piece of darning-cotton; but I rightly concluded that she would not confess to being two yards wide. "Please, I have measured Elspeth," I announced over the tea-table, "and grandpapa is quite right." "Eh?" said Mr. Vandaleur, who had a trick of requiring observations to be repeated to him by his wife. "She says that she has measured Elspeth, and that you are right," said my great-grandmother. "But about what is grandpapa right, my little one?"