She asked the question with eagerness, and from that moment the little seamstress observed that her whole manner changed. She suddenly began to display a new and absorbing interest in the preparations for their departure, and plied Teen with questions regarding the place and her former experiences there. The little seamstress, being a person of a remarkably shrewd and observant turn, saw in this awakened interest only another link in the chain which now appeared to her almost complete. Her former elation over their trip to Bourhill gave place to a painful anxiety lest it should hasten events to a crisis in which the happiness of Gladys might be sadly involved; but it was now too late to help matters, and, with a bit of philosophical calmness, she said within herself, 'What is to be maun be,' and went on with her preparations for the morrow's journey. They set out, accordingly, about noon next day, carrying their belongings in the inevitable tin box, and arrived at Mauchline Station quite early in the afternoon--a lovely afternoon, when all the spring airs were about, and a voice of gladness over the spring's promise in the note of every bird singing on the bending boughs. With what keenness of interest did the little seamstress watch the effect of country sights and sounds upon Liz, and how it pleased her to see the slow wonder gather in her eyes as they wandered across the wide landscape over the rich breadths of the ploughed fields, in which the sowers were busy, to the sheltering woods glistening greenly in the sun, and the blue hills in the hazy distance seeming to shut in the world. It was her pride and pleasure to point out to her companion, as they walked, each familiar and cherished landmark, and though Liz did not say much, it was evident that she was in a manner lifted out of herself. The pure, fragrant air blowing about her, the wide and wonderful beauty of green fields and sunny slopes, filled the soul of Liz with a vague, yearning wonder which was almost pain. It brought home to her sharply a sense of all she had lost in the great and evil city; it was like a revelation of some boundless good of which she had hitherto lived in ignorance, and it awakened in her a bitter regret, which was in very truth rebellious anger, that the beauty of the earth should have so long been hid from her. 'It's a shame,' she said,--'a horrid shame, that we should never hae kent there was a place like this ootside o' Glesca. Wha is't made for?--the rich, I suppose, as the best things are.' 'Oh no,' said Teen quite gently. 'There are plenty puir folk in the country, an' bad folk tae. Mrs. Galbraith says there's as muckle drink drucken in Poosie Nancie's on Seterday nicht as in Johnnie Shields' in the Wynd, but some way it seems different. Look, see, thonder's the big gate o' Bourhill. Eh, I wonder if Miss Gladys is hame?'