’You will see Alison,’ said Mrs. Graham, composedly. ’You must e’en take them as the Lord gave them—or want!’ she added, with spirit. (’To think,’ as she said to her husband afterwards, ’if I hadna been canny—he might ha’ taken Susie or Maggie, as likely as not—and left Ally on our hands!’) ’Mr. Cheape is pleased to be plain and to the point,’ here interrupted the laird, not without sarcasm in his tone, which, however, was quite lost upon his visitor. ’We have, indeed, seven lasses, and little to give them, sir, and cannot therefore be over nice in the matter of their wooing. Alison is at her turkeys in the east meadow, wife. Supposing we conduct this gentleman to the spot, and see if he is inclined to make a bargain of it?’ So Alison’s fate approached her in this quaint fashion, Mr. Cheape stumping at her mother’s side, and the laird bringing up the rear, with a comical eye on the suitor’s burly back. They paused at a gate where Alison could not see them, but they could see her in a patch of sun, with the turkeys picking and cheeping at her feet. ’Is that the one?’ said Mr. Cheape, pointing at the object of his wooing with his whip. ’Our daughter Alison,’ said Mrs. Graham, complacently, with an introductory wave of the hand. ’But twenty, come the New Year time,’ for she much feared that Alison looked older. Mr. Cheape seemed lost in thought and calculation. ’A knowledge of fowls,’ he said at last, heavily, ’is useful in a female.’ ’’Tis indispensable in the lady of a country mansion,’ said Mrs. Graham, cheerfully. ’And none beats Alison at that, let me tell you!’ ’Alison, come here!’ called her father. Alison turned round and obeyed. When she approached the group which held her suitor, she curtseyed, but the behaviour of Mr. Cheape at this juncture was so singular and so disconcerting, that there was no time for a formal introduction between the two. Whether it was the wide, all-too-frankly astonished gaze of Alison’s grey eyes, or the young lady’s imposing height, or simply a fit of bashfulness that overpowered him, cannot be said. But merely the fact can be given, that at this delicate juncture the gallant wooer, with a fiercer grunt than usual, and some muttered exclamation which no one caught, incontinently turned tail and fled towards the house, the distracted matron almost running in his wake. Alison and her father were left together. ’Is that Mr. Cheape, sir?’ enquired the daughter, gravely. ’Ay, lass,’ said the laird. ’’Tis even the great Mr. Cheape of Kincarley, in the county of Fife!’ Alison said nothing, but with her chin in the air, and lilting the flounces of her good dress above the wet grass she went back to her turkeys. Her father laughed his jolly laugh. ’He will have none of you, Ally, that’s plain!’ he called after her. ’So don’t you be losing your heart to his bonny face, I warn you!’ *CHAPTER III.*