If Margaret had been an ordinary invalid it would have been a touching and melancholy contrast. But as it was the advantage was not all on her sister’s side. ‘We’ve been hearing of Ailie Macfarlane,’ said Isabel, eagerly; ‘I have seen her. If it is faith that has cured Ailie, why should you lie there so weak? Oh, my bonnie Maggie! If it was the like of me it would be different; but why should Ailie be well and strong and you lie there?’ ‘I think because it’s God’s will,’ said Margaret: ‘but Miss Catherine has been here, and I have done nothing this hour but talk of myself; it is not the best subject. Mr. Stapylton, I thought you were leaving the Loch? There is not much to take up a young man like you here.’ ‘There is more here than anywhere else in the world,’ said young Stapylton; ‘I should like to stay all my life--I hate the very thought of going away.’ ‘But your friends are all in England,’ said Margaret. ‘and your life--it is not easy for me now to feel what life is. I am like one lying by a riverside, seeing it glide and glide away. I can do little but speak, and that’s poor work. But you that are young and strong are different--you and Isabel. You should not put off each other’s time.’ ‘We met by chance,’ said Isabel, with a sudden blush; ‘and I have done all I had to do. There are times when one cannot work; it’s gloaming now and the day is past. There is a meeting down at the Lochhead with Mr. Lothian and all the ministers. But I would rather stay with you. _She’s_ coming in from the Lochhead, and the bairns are ready for their supper--and, Margaret, we’ve wearied you.’ _She_ was Jean Campbell, the stepmother to whom Isabel was less kind and tolerant than her sister, and whom presently they heard come in with a little commotion into the large low kitchen where the family took its meals. Little Mary had been with her mother, and by and by a little knock at the parlour-door announced her approach. The lady-visitors were very great people to the child, and only she of ‘the other family’ ever ventured uninvited into that splendid apartment. She was like Isabel, though Isabel was indignant to be told so--with two large excitable, brilliant brown eyes, which at this moment blazed out of the little flushed and agitated face. She had been at the meeting, and had heard all, and felt all, with precocious sensibility. While Isabel went out under pretence of helping her stepmother, but in reality to accompany her visitor to the door, the child knelt down on the stool she had been sitting on by Margaret’s side, and began her little passionate tale.