“Weel, maybe it’s ower mateerial an image; but we’re poor fleshly creatures; and I was meaning a Sawbath afternoon, when you’ve come hame from the kirk, your Bible at hand, and a’ sae quiet,” said Bell, amending her first flight. “Jeanie stepping saft about the place, waiting till it’s time to mask the tea, and auld John on the other side of the fire, and nothing to do but to thank your Maker for a’ his mercies and think upon the sermon--if it was a sound sermon,” Bell added, after a pause, taking up her pail; “for I wouldna say they’re a’ of the kind that ye would like to mind and think upon in a Sawbath afternoon in the gloamin’. Miss Margret, what do you say to run up the stair and see if your papaw’s wanting onything? That would aye be something to do.” “Oh, Bell, if you only had more imagination! You always tell me to run and see if papa is wanting anything: and he never wants anything, except, perhaps, a book from the high shelf, where they’re all Greek, and I have to climb up upon the steps, and get no good.” “And whase fault’s that?” said Bell, reproachfully. She had set down the pail again and paused, looking with mournful eyes at the young creature seventeen years old, who did not know what to do with herself. “Whase fault’s that? Did I no beg ye on my bended knees to learn your French book?--a’ wee words, as easy! I could have learned it mysel’; and then ye would have had a’ the shelfs and a’ the books open to you, and your papaw’s learnin’ at your finger’s-end.” “Do you think French and Greek are the same?” cried Margaret. “Why, they’re different print even--the a b c’s different; they are no more like the same thing than you and me.” “I’m no saying they’re just the same,” said Bell, a little discomfited. “One thing’s aye different from another. When I was learnin’ it was aw, bay, say that they learned me, no clip-pit and short like your English. But the creature kens something after a’,” she said to herself as she went in-doors with her pail. “A thing like that, with a’ her wits about her, canna be near a learned man without learning something. But no a note o’ the piany!” Bell said, with a real sense of humiliation. For that want what could make up?