But his partner pounced upon his doubts with righteous anger. ’Laird,’ she said, ’if I see you putting the like o’ that into Ally’s head, I’ll be at the end of my patience. Setting the lass against her meat that gait—such foolery!’ ’Lasses think of love—’ began the laird. ’Love, indeed!’ almost screamed the lady; ’and what right has _she_ to think of love, and her almost twenty, and never a jo to her name yet, or a man’s kiss but her father’s on the cheek o’ her? When _I_ was her age, well knew I what love was; but _she_—let her thank her stars she’s got this chance, and needna pine a spinster all her days!’ ’Well, well,’ said the laird, uncomfortably, ’manage it your own way. I’ll keep my fingers out of the pie. And sort _you_ Mr. Cheape of Kincarley when he comes to-morrow, for I’ll ha’ none of him!’ His lady, finding he would respond on the subject no longer, bustled off to her daughter. *CHAPTER II.* ’Ally, Ally!’ she called in her clear, strong voice all over the house, ’where are you, Ally?’ and through the darkening passages she went in eager search of her eldest daughter. The seven lasses of The Mains were variously disposed of in the old warren of a house—in the lesser rooms, in the attics under the roof, reached by a spiral wooden stair, on which their young feet clattered up and down from early morn till early bed-time. At this moment Alison was putting to bed her two-year-old brother, the ’young laird,’ and apple of all eyes at The Mains. She sat with him in her arms at the tiny window of the nursery and crooned him to sleep, and as she sang she looked out at the murky red sky behind the plane trees, at the rooks circling and cawing on their way to bed, at the old lime, a towering mass of black shadow in the gloaming. This was the scene that Alison looked upon continually every evening of her life—this young woman without lovers and innocent of kisses. Mrs. Graham was breathing rather quickly by the time she stood at the nursery door, and her first elated sentences were somewhat breathless. ’Braw news your father has brought home for you to-night, Ally!’ she began. ’Wheesht, mother!’ said Alison, ’you will waken Jacky.’ ’Ah!’ said Mrs. Graham, knowingly, ’you’ll soon have done with Jacky now!’ ’Sure,’ said Alison, lifting round grey eyes to her mother’s face, and pressing Jacky’s head close to her shoulder, ’I’ve no wish to be done with Jacky;’ and she put a kiss on the boy’s curls. ’Tut!’ said Mrs. Graham, impatiently, ’you might have little Jackys of your own. Think you never of that, Ally?’ Alison blushed in the dark: it was not a fair question. Jacky was so sound asleep by this time that the voices did not wake him, and she rose, laid him on the wooden cot beside her own bed, and happed the clothes about him with deft movements full of a natural motherliness. ’Come down now, Ally,’ said her mother, ’I want you.’