‘If it had been me I would have had her afore now! Hoots, never mind waking her; whisht, my bonnie lamb! Your little bed’s saft, but no so saft as your ain mother’s bosom. There she is to ye,’ said Jean, putting the rosy, half-awakened child into her mother’s arms. The good woman stood and gazed at the group with a cordial, kindly pleasure. ‘Poor lass! poor bairn!’ she said to herself as she watched the mother’s passion of kisses and tears and unintelligible words: vague suspicions were creeping about Jean’s mind. This close strain of passion, those tears which did not dry up as they ought to have done, or give place to smiles, filled her with alarm--an alarm, it must be confessed, not unmixed with satisfaction, for had not she, in common with all the country-side, declared that of such a marriage no good could come? ‘Mr. Stapylton, he’s away to Kilcranion?--ye’re to bide there, I hear? but what for could you no come hame, Isabel, to your own house?’ ‘It is your house now,’ said Isabel, with an attempt at a smile. ‘Na, na, only the life-rent,’ said Jean, ‘of my ain end; and I’m awfu’ thankfu’ to have that. Am I one to come ben to the parlour and set up for a leddy? No, my bonnie woman, it’s hers and yours a’ the days of my life, as well as when I’m dead and gone. Him and you might have been as comfortable here as in Johnny Gibb’s house at Kilcranion. There’s nae accounting for tastes--but sure am I there’s no a room in it equal to the new parlour here in the Glebe.’ ‘It is only for a short time--a month or two,’ said Isabel. ‘And where are you going then, if ane might ask?’ ‘We were talking of going to America,’ said Isabel, under her breath. The child had relapsed into sleep again with its head nestled against her breast. ‘To America!’ said Jean. ‘Eh, Isabel! that’s an awfu’ change to think of--and the bairn----?’ ‘What of the bairn?’ cried Isabel in a sudden wild panic of terror; and gathering up her child’s rosy, dimpled limbs in her arms, she rose and confronted her stepmother as if there could be any meaning or power in Jean’s unconsidered words. ‘Na, Isabel, I’m meaning nothing,’ said Jean, falling back in dismay; the sharp misery of the young mother’s tone, her desperate attitude, the sudden mastery of her excitement over all her motherly care not to disturb the baby, came like a revelation to her stepmother; with a woman’s wit she seized upon the sudden pang which had come to herself, to comfort with that, the unknown and deeper misery which thus erected itself before her without a moment’s warning. ‘It’s just that my heart will break to part with the darling,’ she cried, putting her apron to her eyes.