The mistress of the house was a handsome woman still, in spite of household and maternal cares. Above the middle height, and of comely figure, she had hair still raven black, a glowing colour in her soft unwithered cheek, and the light of a strong and unimpaired vitality in her fine, though rather hard, black eye. She had the complete empire over her husband, which such a woman will ever have over men—a woman, healthy, fresh, strong-willed, though not moulded, perhaps, in the most refined of nature’s moulds. He had married her in his youth—the daughter of a small Glasgow lawyer, hardly, perhaps, his equal from a social point of view. But this was a failing soon overlooked in the blooming, hearty, managing bride, who brought fresh blood to mingle with the rather attenuated strain of a genteel Scottish family, which boasted more lineage than looks. The laird stretched himself to the genial warmth, and prepared to enjoy the communication of his bit of news. ’A gentleman is to visit us here at The Mains to-morrow in the morning, wife,’ he began, casually. ’Oh, ay,’ said Mrs. Graham, in the tone of one who expects no pleasant surprises. ’It’ll be Cultobanocher or Drumore, likely, to speir about the grey mare and her foal.’ ’Not at all,’ said the laird, ’but a stranger this time—one Cheape of Kincarley, in the county of Fife, at this time abiding with Drumore.’ ’And what will he be wanting with us?’ inquired the mistress of The Mains. ’A wife, it would seem,’ said the laird, in a carefully-suppressed tone of voice, but a twinkle in his eye. ’Tut, laird!’ said the lady, crossly, ’you’re joking, but none of your jokes for me!’ She indeed believed the news too good to be true, and was wroth with the laird for tantalising her on so tender a subject. ’I am not joking—not I,’ protested the husband and father. ’’Tis the living truth, as I sit here. This fellow will be over here to-morrow at noon to see if he cannot choose a wife among our seven lasses.’ Then followed, in answer to a rain of questions from the excited lady, a full and particular account of Mr. Cheape, his means and estate—all, indeed, that the laird could tell. Mrs. Graham’s face was flushed, her eyes sparkling; the corners of her full, firm mouth twitched with eagerness. Before the conversation was half over, she had the wedding settled in her mind, with already a side-thought for the bride’s dress, and such scanty plenishing as could be spared from The Mains. ’And to think that I was putting poor Ally down for an old maid!’ she exclaimed, rapturously. ’The girl with never a man after her yet, and then to have this rich husband flung at her head! She was born with a silver spoon in her mouth, after all—poor Ally!’ ’Bide a wee!’ said the laird, cautiously. ’Wait till you see the man, my woman! A grey beard, even like myself, and speckled like a puddock wi’ the cow-pox. I doubt the girl will get a scunner when she sees him.’