’No, indeed, sir,’ said Alison. ’I never was in a town in my life, excepting Stirling, where I was at school.’ ’Ah, indeed!’ said Herries, suppressing a yawn, but not at all suppressing a bad-tempered tendency to be covertly rude to this country girl, who was going to bore him. ’And when you were not at school, in Stirling, you lived—?’ ’I lived at my father’s house, sir,’ said Alison, quite simply. ’Hum-m,’ said Herries, perhaps a trifle disconcerted. ’I believe that I have often heard of The Mains,’ he went on, condescendingly, ’a rural solitude. And what did Miss Graham do at The Mains?’ ’I minded the turkeys, sir,’ said Alison, ’and did as I was bid.’ She was not, in spite of her shyness and timidity, very well pleased with the condescending tone of this fine young townsman, and spoke roundly. The answer was amusing to Herries, and changed his mood. He looked attentively at the speaker, but would not admit there was anything to admire. A ’big bouncing miss,’ he called her in his thoughts. But, nevertheless, he looked again; and once, he caught, full in the eyes, the innocent candour of her wide grey glance—and before it, he was aware that his own gaze fell. ’And have you made friends with these little men?’ he asked, in a totally changed tone; and Willy and Danny grinned. After that they conversed very amicably about the little boys, their lessons and their play, Danny’s delicacy and Willy’s school. Herries made himself vastly agreeable, as he well could do when he chose; and Alison was quite startled when she saw how low the candles had burnt, which were quite respectably long when Jean had brought them in. But still Nancy tarried. ’My cousin is late, surely,’ said Herries. ’I, too, was bidden to the great Nimmo’s, but I suspect I have passed a much more profitable evening where I am.’ ’But, indeed, no, sir!’ said Alison, in all good faith. ’For the great Mr. Burns, the poet, was to be at Miss Nimmo’s, and ’twas to meet him that Nancy was so wild to go.’ ’I’m the more glad I was absent, then,’ said Herries. ’Mr. Burns is not a person to my taste.’ ’Why, sir,’ said Alison, wonderingly, ’don’t you admire his great poems?’ ’I never read them,’ said Herries, ’and never wish to. And, moreover,’ he continued, severely, ’I gather they are no fit reading for a lady, whatever they may be for men.’ ’But why?’ cried Alison, forgetting her shyness, in her surprise, ’sure, sir, there’s the most beautiful things in them, all the best feelings you can think of, and so often religion and the highest thoughts....’ ’Then all I can say is,’ said Herries, shortly, ’that their author adds hypocrisy to vice, and becomes the more odious in consequence.’