The Kirkton, poor little place, had never looked so attractive before. It had been only a little village of no interest, which sisters Jean and Grace held in the utmost contempt, driving Margaret wild with suppressed rage by the comparison they made between the Scotch hamlet and their English villages; and now it was a picture! She wondered what they would think of it now. Margaret gazed into the flame of the candles and seemed to see it hanging upon a visionary background. A beautiful picture: the gray old church with its rustic tombs, and all the houses clustered below, where people were living, waiting their advance and preferment into the grassy graves above. Here was the real mission of art accomplished by the humblest artist--to make of the common and well-known a dazzling undiscovered glory. Only the Kirkton, yet a picture! and all the doing of the old friend equally glorified and changed--Rob Glen. Margaret was more pleasantly excited, more amused, more roused in mind and imagination than perhaps she had ever been in her life. A stirring in the long room close by roused her to a sense of her duties. That windowful of sky had darkened; it was almost night: as much as it ever is night in Scotland in June--a silvery night, with no blackness in it but a vague whiteness, a soft celestial reflection of the departed day. Evidently it was late, time to go to bed. Margaret pushed the door open which led into the long room. Sir Ludovic was closing his book. He kept early hours; for it was his habit to wake very early in the morning, as is so usual to old people. He turned to her with a smile upon his face. “My Peggy, you are late; what has kept you amused so long to-night? It is you generally who let me know when it is time for bed. What have you been doing?” “Nothing, papa;” but Margaret blushed. However, as she blushed so often this was nothing to remark. “Put it up upon the shelf,” he said; “I have done with that one. It is heavy for you to lift, my dear. It is a sign that I am an old man, a very old man, my little Peggy, that I allow you to do everything for me; but at the same time there is a suitability in it. The young should learn to serve. When you are a full-blown lady, it is then that all the men you meet will serve you.” “I want no men to serve me, papa. When I am middle-aged, as you say, I will have no servants but women. Is not Jeanie better to hand you your plate and fill you your wine than old John?” “Old John and I have grown old together, my Peggy; but I think your taste is very natural. A young woman is a pleasanter object than an old man.” “I did not mean that,” she cried, with compunction; “you, papa, you are the handsomest of us all. There is no one to match you; but the like of Jeanie looks so clean and fresh, and John in his black clothes--”