“Mees Margie” is a tall quaint, ill-favoured Scotchwoman on the wrong side of fifty, who has come out to India to keep the house of her brother, the doctor of the 145th. She is a rigid Presbyterian, with a brogue as uncompromising as her doctrine and a judgment as hard as nails. Never having been tempted to do anything wrong, she is excessively virtuous, and has an eye like a hawk for the misdoings of others; indeed she is so excellent a detective that she discovers the sins before the sinners have quite made up their minds to commit them. She is the detestation of the regiment, and the Colonel’s wife has been compelled in consequence to show Miss MacQuirk more attention than she would otherwise have done to make up for the neglect of the others. For never does Miss Maggie pass half-an-hour without hinting at a fresh peccadillo on the part of somebody else. She has a rooted conviction that all soldiers are libertines, not fit to be trusted out of sight of their wives or sisters, and if she has no new misdemeanour to relate on the part of the masters, the servants are sure to come in for their share of abuse, and so Miss Maggie MacQuirk manages to find food for scandal all the year round. Ethel Dunstan ought to know her foibles well enough to mistrust her by this time, and had the doctor’s sister come in with some new story of young Freshfield’s flirting, on Mr. Masterman’s card playing, she would have been as ready as ever to laugh at the old Scotchwoman’s mountainous molehills, and to assure her she was utterly mistaken. But Miss MacQuirk’s discourse this morning had taken a different turn. She had talked exclusively of the latest arrival in Mudlianah: lovely Mrs. Lawless, who has just returned with her husband, Jack Lawless, from staff duty in the northwest provinces, and how her beauty seemed to have addled the heads of all the men of the 145th Bengal Muftis. And there was a great deal of truth in Miss MacQuirk’s assertions, and that is what has made them go home to the heart of Ethel Dunstan. We are all so ready to believe anything that affects our own happiness. “Deed, and it’s jeest freetful,” said Miss Margie, in her provincial twang, “to see a set of dunderheeds tairned the wrang way for the sake of a wee bit of a pasty face wi’ two beeg eyes in the meedle of it. It’s eno’ to mak’ a God-fearing woman praise the Laird that has kept her in the straight path. For I’ll no affairm that it’s by mee ain doin’ that I can haud up my heed the day with the Queen o’ England herself if need be.” “But Mrs. Lawless is very, _very_ lovely--there cannot be two opinions on that subject,” cried generous-hearted Mrs. Dunstan. “For my own part I never saw a more beautiful face than hers, and my husband says just the same thing.” “Eh! I nae doot it! The Cairnal’s heed is tairned like all the rest o’ them. But he cannot ca’ it reet that men should rin after a leddy that has a lawfu’ meeried husband of her ain.”