“I canna think about it,” said Jeanie, softly; “I mustna think about it; the world begins to swim and swim, and the light to go out of my eyes---- I will sew my seam, if ye please.” And then there was a little pause, and everything was still. Old Sarah and her pupils stayed outside, and the murmur of their voices sounded softly in the summer air; but within the clock ticked, and the white ashes from the half-dead fire fell now and then faintly on the hearth, and Jeanie’s “seam” rustled as she worked; that was all. Though there was that ghost of a fire, the room, with its tiny window and thick walls, was cooler than many a much better ventilated house; and the light was cool and green and shadowy, coming through the tall woody branches of a geranium trained upon a fanshaped framework, which answered instead of a curtain to the little window. Clare sat embarrassed, not knowing how to address this creature, who was so unlike anything she had known or encountered before. “Do you remember your home? I suppose it is a place very different from Arden?” she said at last. “Home! oh it’s bonnie, bonnie!--bonnier than Arden,” cried Jeanie, and then she paused with instinctive courtesy. “But Arden is beautiful,” she said. “It’s a’ so beautiful that God has made. I canna’ bide towns and streets and places that are built--but Arden---- and the green grass and the bonnie trees----” Where had the child learned to think of other people’s sentiments--was it natural to her nation--or only to her individual character? Clare felt that the Marys and Ellens of the village would not have thought of any such refinement. “Do you live among the hills?” she said. “On Loch Arroch side. The trees are very bonnie, and so are all the parks and pleasant fields,” said Jeanie; “but if you were to see the hills up among the clouds, and the bonnie water at their feet! and then when you live always there, and your heart gets full----” “Poor child!” said Clare again, growing more and more interested in spite of herself. “You are too young to have felt your heart grow full as you say.” “I am seventeen,” said Jeanie. “Plenty folk have learned trouble before that. Granny says she had nobody to take care of her when she was seventeen--neither father nor mother, nor---- And I have always her---- Oh, if you had seen my Willie!” she said suddenly, “he was aye so bright and so kind. Miss Arden, you have a brother too----” “My poor child!” cried Clare. “Jeanie, Jeanie, if that is your name, don’t think of that. For your poor grandmother’s sake don’t do anything to bring it on.” “I cannot bring it on,” said Jeanie; “it comes when I am not thinking of Willie, if there is ever a time I am not thinking of him. It’s best to let me cry. Oh my bonnie boy! and in the sea, Miss Arden; think of that! no a grave under the sod, where I could go and greet, but in yon great, great, wild stormy sea--it is that I cannot bear.”