“My pretty little darling, welcome to Heathbank,” says the voice; and the voice is not unpleasant, though it is pitched somewhat too high. “Kiss me, love--don’t let us be strangers. I expect you to make yourself quite at home.” And Menie passively and with humility submits to be kissed--a process of which she has had little experience hitherto--and stands aside, suddenly very much subdued and silent, while the stranger flutters into the carriage window to tender the same sign of regard to Menie’s mother. Menie’s mother, better prepared, maintains a tolerable equanimity; but Menie herself has been struck dumb, and cannot find a word to say, as she follows with a subdued step into the sacred fastnesses of Heathbank. The muslin floats, the ringlets wave, before the fascinated eyes of Menie, and Menie listens to the voice as if it were all a dream. CHAPTER XI. “My patience! but ye’ll no tell me, Miss Menie, that yon auld antick is the doctor’s aunt?” “She was no older than my father, though she was his aunt, Jenny,” said Menie Laurie, with humility. Menie was something ashamed and had not yet recovered herself of the first salute. “Nae aulder than the doctor!--I wouldna say; your mamma hersel is no sae young as she has been; but the like o’ yon!” “Look, Jenny, what a pleasant place,” said the evasive Menie; “though where the heath is--but I suppose as they call this Heathbank we must be near it. Look, Jenny, down yonder, at the steeple in the smoke, and how clear the air is here, and this room so pleasant and lightsome. Are you not pleased, Jenny?” “Yon’s my lady’s maid,” said Jenny, with a little snort of disdain. “They ca’ her Maria, nae less--set her up! like a lady’s sel in ane o’ your grand novelles; and as muckle dress on an ilkaday as I’ve seen mony a young lady gang to the kirk wi’, Miss Menie--no to say your ain very sel’s been plainer mony a day. Am I no pleased? Is’t like to please folk to come this far to an outlandish country, and win to a house at last wi’ a head owre’t like yon!” “Whisht, Jenny!” Menie Laurie has opened her window softly, with a consciousness of being still a stranger, and in a stranger’s house. The pretty white muslin curtains half hide her from Jenny, and Jenny stands before the glass and little toilet-table, taking up sundry pretty things that ornament it, with mingled admiration and disdain, surmising what this, and this, is for, and wondering indignantly whether the lady of the house can think that Menie stands in need of the perfumes and cosmetics to which she herself resorts. But the room is a very pretty room, with its lightly-draped bed, and bright carpet, and clear lattice-window. Looking round, Jenny may still fuff, but has no reason to complain.