“How do you like the folk ben the house?” she said, as she sat at tea; the cake she had brought “in a present” was placed on the table in the place of honour, and the tea was “masking” before the fire. It was a soft evening in May. The door was open, but the fire was not disagreeable, and the sound of the Esk far down below the brae, and the rustling of the leaves close round the house, were softened by the air of spring into a pleasant murmur. The family “ben the house” being separated by a good Scotch stone wall from old Mrs Moffatt’s nest, gave no sound of their neighbourhood, and nothing but that wild but soft cadence of the waters and the trees interrupted the homely domestic harmonies more closely at hand--the cheery little stir and _pétillement_ of the fire, the singing of the kettle, the purring of the cat, the ticking of the old clock. Mrs Harding combined an earnest desire for information with a very pleasant sense of the immediate comfort and ease which she was enjoying. My lord and my lady were “out to their dinner,” and Harding himself had promised to daunder up to the Hewan in the gloaming and fetch his wife home. Being “out to her tea” was an unusual event in the housekeeper’s responsible life, and the enjoyment it gave her was great. “Eh, how quiet and pleasant it is!” she added, almost with enthusiasm; “this is one of the days you can hear the grass growin’: and to get away from a’ the stew and bustle o’ the dinner, the hot fire, and the smell o’ the meat, and thae taupies that let one thing burn, and another boil over. If I were to envy onybody in the world, I think, Jean Moffatt, it would be you.” “Hoots,” said the old woman, with a pleasant consciousness that her lot was enviable; “when you and your man make up your mind to retire, my certy, ye’ll be a hantle better off than the like o’ me.” “And when will that be?” said Mrs Harding, with a sigh; “no as lang as _They_ live, for they couldna do without my man an’ me. But I was saying, how do you like the folk ben the house?” “You shouldna let yourself be keepit in bondage,” said Jean, with a touch of sarcasm; “when folk _maun_ do without ye, they _can_ do without ye--I’ve aye seen that. Oh, I like them real well. They come and they gang, and now it’s a breakfast and now the bairns’ dinner--nothing more--and aye a maid to serve them; so it suits me fine. The lads are stirring boys, and Missie’s a darling. She makes me think upon one I lost, that was the sweetest o’ a’ my flock. Eh, if you could but keep a girlie like that aye the same, what a pleasure it would be in a house! But the bit things grow up and marry, and have weans of their own, and get to be just as careworn and wrinkled as yoursel’. I think whiles my Marg’ret, with ten of a family, and a man no better than he should be, is aulder than me.”