“Then we need not be surprised if we hear of an engagement,” said Mrs. Cupar, “in that quarter.” She thought the woman was daft, as she said to the girls afterward. Miss Leslie! a beauty, and an heiress, and one of the proudest families in Fife. Surely the woman was out of her wits! But it was as well to give her her own way, and hear all that there was to hear. “Na, it’s no for me to say,” said Mrs. Glen. “I’m no saying just that. I’m saying nothing, it’s no my part, and Rob, he’s no a lad to brag; but I keep my een open, and I form my ain opinions for all that. My son’s not just a common lad. Till something opens him up, he’s real hard to divine. He’s more than ordinar clever, for one thing, and when he gets with folk that can enter into his ways-- I’m free to confess I’m no one of that kind mysel’. I’ve nae education to put me on a par with him. There’s his pictures. You’ve no seen his pictures? I’m told, and I can well believe it,” said the proud mother, “that there’s many a warse in the National Gallery, though that’s considered the best collection in a’ the world.” “Dear me, now, to think of that!” said the other farmer’s wife. “Jessie and Bessie are both very good at drawing. They were considered to have a great taste for it; but for my part I’ve always thought for a man that it was a great wastery of time.” “No when it’s the best kind,” said Mrs. Glen, in her superior knowledge. “I wouldna say for the young ladies’ bits of drawings; but when it’s the right kind, there’s nothing I ken that brings in more money.” Rob’s mother felt justly that this was the true test. “There’s thousands on thousands o’ pounds to be made by it; but it wants a real genius, and that’s just what Rob has shown.” “Dear me,” said her listener again. Notwithstanding a natural undercurrent of scorn, she could not help being impressed by so positive an assertion. Had Jessie and Bessie shown real genius? There was something deeply impressive, even though she scarcely believed in it, in a thing by which thousands and thousands could be made. “I must look out the girls’ sketches to-morrow,” she said, “and see what your son thinks of them. It must be a great comfort for you, Mrs. Glen, when he has made up his mind not to follow one thing, to find he has a good prospect in another. It’s not often a young man has that luck when he gives up what he’s been brought up to. But now I must bid you good-day, for this is our nearest road; and I hope you’ll let me hear when anything happens.” “The woman’s daft,” Mrs. Cupar said, as she went on. “She thinks because Sir Ludovic, poor old frail gentleman, gripped Rob’s arm, finding him the foremost, that he’s going to give her son his daughter Margaret Leslie!--that thinks herself of a different kind of flesh and blood from the like of you; and I would think myself sore brought down in the world if I had to give one o’ you to Rob Glen!”