Mrs. Glen was completely nonplussed. She looked at him with an air of imperious demand, which, gradually yielding to the force of her curiosity, fell, as he made no reply, into a quite softened interrogation. “An auld companion?” she said to herself, bewildered; then added, in a gentler tone than she had used since his return, a side remark to herself: “He’s no that auld himsel’.” “No,” he said, “but she is younger, mother, and as beautiful as an angel, I think; and she had not forgotten Rob Glen.” His mother looked at him more and more perplexed. But with her curiosity and with her perplexity her heart melted. Lives there a mother so hard, even when her anger is hottest, as to be indifferent to any one who cares for her boy? “I canna think who you’re meaning,” she said; “auld companions are scarce even to the like o’ me-- I mind upon nobody that you could name by that name, a callant like you. Auld playfellow! there’s the minister’s son, as great a credit to his family as you’re a trial; but he’s no a leddy--” Again Rob laughed; he was indemnified for all his sufferings. “I will not keep you in doubt,” he said, with a certain condescension. “It is little Margaret Leslie; you cannot have forgotten _her_, mother. If she is not a lady I don’t know who is, and,” he added, sinking his voice with genuine feeling, and a tender rush of childish recollection, “my little queen.” “Little Margaret Leslie!” said his mother, looking at him stupefied, “you’re no meaning Miss Margret at Earl’s-hall?” she cried, with a half shriek of astonishment, and gazed at him open-mouthed, like one in a dream. CHAPTER VI.