"Yes, yes," he said in an absent-minded way. "Run away now, like a good girl. I'm busy." "Yes, I'm going. Just look at the snug way Buff has arranged the kitten. Father, Thomas has been having nightmares about Satan in his domestic relations. Did you know Satan had a wife and baby----?" "Elizabeth!" "I didn't say it; it was Thomas. That boy has an original mind." "Well, well, girl; but you are keeping me back." "Yes, I'm going. There's just one thing--about the chapter at prayers. I was wondering--only wondering, you know--if Baruch the son of Neriah had any real bearing on our everyday life?" Mr. Seton looked at his daughter, then remarked as he turned back to his work: "I sometimes think you are a very ignorant creature, Elizabeth." But Elizabeth only laughed as she shut the door and made her way kitchenwards. On the kitchen stairs she met Ellen the housemaid, who stopped her with a "Please, Miss Elizabeth," while she fumbled in the pocket of her print and produced a post card with a photograph on it. "It's ma brither," she explained. "I got it this mornin'." Elizabeth carried the card to the window at the top of the staircase and studied it carefully. "I think he's like you, Ellen," she said. "How beautifully his hair is brushed." Ellen beamed. "He's got awful pretty prominent eyes," she said. "Yes," said Elizabeth. "I expect you're very proud of him, Ellen. Is he your eldest brother?" "Yes, mum. He's a butcher in the Co-operative and _awful_ steady." Elizabeth handed back the card. "Thank you very much for letting me see it. How is your little sister's foot?" "It's keepin' a lot better, and ma mother said I was to thank you for the toys and books you sent her." "Oh, that's all right. I'm so glad she's better. When you're doing my room to-day remember the mirrors, will you? This weather makes them so dim." "Yes, mum," said Ellen cheerfully, as she went to her day's work. Elizabeth found Marget waiting for her. She had laid out on the kitchen-table all the broken meats from the pantry and was regarding the display gloomily. Marget had been twenty-five years with the Setons and was not so much a servant as a sort of Grand Vizier. She expected to be consulted on every point, and had the gravest fears about Buff's future because Elizabeth refused to punish him. "It's no' kindness," she would say; "it's juist saftness. He _should_ be wheepit." She adored the memory of Elizabeth's mother, who had died five years before, when Buff was a little tiny boy. She adored too "the Maister," as she called Mr. Seton, though deprecating his other-worldly, absent-minded ways. "It wadna dae if we were a' like the Maister," she often reminded Elizabeth. "Somebody maun think aboot washin's and things."