When he had fully informed the young lawyer of all the needful points in the matter, and formally left the cause in his hands, Cosmo left him to secure a place in the first coach, and to hasten home with all the speed he could make. He could scarcely have felt more strange, or perceived a greater change upon every thing, if he had dropped from the skies into Kirkbride; yet every thing was precisely the same, so clearly and broadly recognizable, that Cosmo could not understand what difference had passed upon them, and still less could understand that the difference was in himself. His mother stood waiting for him at the door of the Norlaw Arms. It was cold March weather, and the Mistress had been sitting by the fire, waiting the arrival of the coach. She was flushed a little with the frosty air and the fire, and looked disturbed and uneasy. Cosmo thought he could fancy she turned a jealous eye upon himself as he sprang from the coach to meet her, which fancy was perfectly true, for the Mistress was half afraid that her son who had been abroad might be “led away” by his experiences of travel, and might have become indifferent or contemptuous about his home. She was a little displeased, too, that he had lingered behind Cameron. She was not like Madame Roche--all-enduring sweetness was not in this old-fashioned Scottish mother. She could not help making a strong personal claim of that arbitrary love which stinted nothing in bestowing upon those who were her own, and opened her heart only slowly and secondarily to the rest of the world. “So you’re hame at last!” was the Mistress’s salutation; though her eye was jealous, there was moisture in it, as she looked at her boy. Cosmo had grown in stature for one thing; he was brown with exposure, and looked manly and strong; and, not least, his smooth cheeks began to show evidence of those symptoms of manhood which boys adore. There was even a something not to be described or defined upon Cosmo’s upper lip, which caught his mother’s eye in a moment, and gave a tangible ground for her little outburst of half-angry fondness. “You’re no’ to bring any of your outlandish fashions here!” said the Mistress, “though you have been in foreign parts. I’ll have no person in my house bearded like a Frenchman. Can you no’ carry your bag in your ain hand, laddie? Come away, then; you can shake hands with other folk another time.”