Vi had a great deal to bear afterwards, when the boys heard the story, and held over her the recollection of the “day she played truant,” with all that delight in torture which is natural to their kind. But with all this they could not take from her the memory of it, which grew dearer in proportion as she buried it in her own small bosom. The running of the water, the rustling of the leaves, the solemn drowse of noon in the full sunshine, the soft velvet rush of the foaming linn over the little fingers with which she tried to stop its torrent, and all the stirs and movements among the trees, peopled the child’s recollection for many a day. Seated at a dull window in Moray Place, looking out upon the stiff garden with its shrubs--public property, and unlovely as public property generally is--Violet could see once more her bold companion leaping from one boulder to another, with the furious Esk underneath, and feel again a delicious thrill of visionary terror. She had learned more about “the country,” about woods and wilds, and birds and squirrels, and about the sensations of explorers in a new-discovered land, than anything else could have taught her. “I too in Arcadia,” she could have said: her one day of playing truant was the possession out of which she drew most enjoyment; and I leave the gentle reader to imagine, as Violet grew older, whether she could dismiss the partner of this celestial piece of wickedness into the mere common region of indifference, and leave him there undistinguished by any preference. She was always Val’s defender afterwards, when any discussion of his merits arose among the boys; and what was more remarkable still, Mrs Pringle became Val’s warm partisan and supporter, dismissing almost with indignation any suggestion which might be made to his disfavour. She was impatient of what she called her husband’s “whimsey” about his heirship. “It is just a piece of folly,” she would say with some heat. “Are the Esksides fools to take up a false heir? or what motive could they have? Your father is a very clever man, and has a great deal of sense in a general way. But, boys, don’t you build any hopes upon this, for it’s just nonsense. You may be sure they are not the kind of folk to commit themselves, or expose the property to certain waste and destruction, with an impostor for an heir----” That he should have so important a deserter from his standard filled Mr Pringle with surprise. He was justified in thinking that it would have been natural that, right or wrong, she should have placed herself on her own boy’s side. But Mrs Pringle was a woman who was given to an opinion of her own, and was not to be persuaded out of it when once formed upon sufficient cause.