“They tell me it’s a haill month since it was a’ settled, but I hear naething o’ the house or the plenishing, and no a word o’ what Jenny’s to do. If they’re no wanting me, I’m no wanting them--ne’er a bit. It’s aye the way guid service is rewarded; and whatfor should there be ony odds wi’ Jenny? I might hae kent that muckle, if I had regarded counsel, or thocht o’ my ainsel; but aye Jenny’s foremost thocht was o’ them, for a’ sic an ill body as she is now.” And a tear was in Jenny’s eye as she smoothed down the folds of Menie’s dress--Menie’s finest dress, her own present, which Menie was to wear to-night. And Menie’s ornaments are all laid out carefully upon the table, everything she is likely to need, before Jenny’s lingering step leaves the room. “I canna weel tell, for my pairt, what like life’ll be without her,” muttered Jenny, as she went away--“I reckon no very muckle worth the minding about; but I’m no gaun to burden onybody that doesna want me--no, if I should never hae anither hour’s comfort a’ my days.” And slowly, with many a backward glance and pause, Jenny withdrew. Neglect is always hard to bear. Jenny believed herself to be left out of their calculations--forgotten of those to whom she had devoted so many years of her life; and Jenny, though she tried to be angry, could not manage it, but felt her indignant eyes startled with strange tears. It made a singular cloud upon her face this unusual emotion; the native impatience only struggled through it fitfully in angry glimpses, though Jenny was furious at herself for feeling so desolate, and very fain would have thrown off her discomfort in a fuff--but far past the region of the fuff was this her new-come solitude of heart. Her friends were dead or scattered, her life was all bound up in her mistress and her mistress’s child, and it was no small trial for Jenny to find herself thus cast off and thrown aside. The next who enters this room has a little heat about her, a certain atmosphere of annoyance and displeasure. “I will be a burden”--unawares the same words steal over Mrs Laurie’s lip, but the sound of her voice checks her. Two or three steps back and forward through the room, a long pause before the window, and then her brow is cleared. You can see the shadows gradually melting away, as clouds melt from the sky, and in another moment she has left the room, to resume her place down stairs.