"Nannie has told you our great news?" Mrs. Richie inquired. "Oh, so it's come to a head, has it?" Mrs. Maitland said, vastly pleased. "Of course I knew what was in the wind, but I didn't know it was settled. Fact is, I haven't seen her, except at breakfast, and then I was in too much of a hurry to think of it. Well, well, nothing could be better! That's what I came to see you about; I wanted to hurry things along. What do you say to it, Mr. Ferguson?" Mrs. Maitland looked positively benign. She was sitting, a little gingerly, on the edge of the yellow damask sofa at one side of the fireplace, her feet wide apart, her skirt pulled back over her knees, so that her scorching petticoat was somewhat liberally displayed. Her big shoes began to steam in the comfortable heat of a soft-coal fire that was blazing and snapping between the brass jambs. Mrs. Richie had drawn up a chair beside her, and Robert Ferguson stood with his elbow on the mantelpiece looking down at them. Even to Mr. Ferguson Mrs. Maitland's presence in the gently feminine room was incongruous. There was a little table at the side of the sofa, and Mrs. Maitland, thrusting out a large, gesticulating hand, swept a silver picture-frame to the floor; in the confusion of picking it up and putting it into a safer place the little emotional tension of the moment vanished. Mrs. Richie winked away a tear, and laughed, and said it was too absurd to think that their children were men and women, with their own lives and interests and hopes--and love-affairs! "But love-making is in the air, apparently," she said; "young Knight is going to be married." "What, Goose Molly's stepson?" Mrs. Maitland said. "She used to make sheep's-eyes at--at somebody I knew. But she didn't get him! Well, I must give the boy a present." "And the next thing," Mrs. Richie went on, "will be Nannie's engagement. Only it will be hard to find anybody good enough for Nannie!" "_Nannie_?" said Mrs. Maitland blankly. "She is to be Elizabeth's bridesmaid, of course,--unless she gets married before our wedding comes off. A young doctor has to have patients before he can have a wife, so I'm afraid the chances are Elizabeth will be Nannie's bridesmaid." She was so full of these maternal and womanly visions that the sudden slight rigidity of Mrs. Maitland's face did not strike her. "Nannie has been so interested," Mrs. Richie went on. "David will always be grateful to her for helping his cause. I don't know what he would have done without Nannie to confide in!"