It was a day of early spring, and had rained plentifully in the morning. Light white clouds, tossed and blown about by a fantastic wind, threw their soft shadow on a clear deep sky of blue; and raindrops, glittering in the sunshine, hung upon flowers and branches, and fell now and then in a gleam from the shaken hedge or garden fruit-trees. The garden paths were wet--the road without had a flowing rivulet of accumulated rain, which almost made as much ringing with its hasty footsteps as did the burn itself under the little bridge which crossed the way--and the blue-slated roof of this house of Burnside blazed like a slanted mirror in the eyes of the full sun. Not the faintest shade of architectural pretensions dignified this house of Burnside. Four substantial walls of rough grey stone, a slated roof, with but one projecting attic window to break its slope--a door in the gable where one would least have expected a door to be--and windows breaking the wall just where the builder found it convenient that the wall should be broken. The house stood upon a little knoll, the ground on all sides sloping downward,--at one hand to the course of the burn--at the other, to the edge of the plantation which benevolently threw up a line of tall firs to screen its human neighbours from the unfriendly east. Close upon the very edge of the walls pressed the soft grass of the lawn; some spring-flowers looked out from little bits of border soil here and there; and a fairy larch stood half-way up the ascent on the sunniest side, shaking itself free of the encumbering rain with a pretty, coquettish grace, and throwing a glistening flash of little diamonds, now and then, as if in sport, over the fluttering hair and sunny face, which seem to have a natural sisterhood and companionship with the free and graceful tree. Hair that was smoothly shaded this morning over the young, clear, youthful brow--the wind has found out scores of little curls hidden in the braids, and turns them out with a child’s laughter, full of sweet triumph and delight--a face that looks up full and clearly to answer the brave smile upon the sky. Twenty years old, with warm blood flashing in her cheeks, a fearless, innocent courage gleaming from her eyes, and never a cloud over her all her life long, save some such soft, white, rounded shadow as floats yonder in our sight over the undiscouraged heavens--for it is very true that neither headache nor heartache has yet been known to Menie Laurie by any surer knowledge than the hearing of the ear.