mirror which hung over it, but these candles were not lighted, neither were those on the writing-table at the other end of the room. When there was company, or, indeed, any visitor, in the evening they were lighted. The pair on the mantelpiece only when the visitor was unimportant, but the whole six when anybody of consequence was there, and then, you may suppose, how bright the room was, lighted _al giorus_, so to speak. But the household, and Elsie’s little friends, when they came rushing in with some commission from their mothers, were very well contented with the two on the table. They wanted snuffing often, but still they gave, what was then supposed to be, a very good light. Elsie looked up, pleased to see her brother, and let her work fall on her knee. Her needlework was one of the chief occupations of her life, and she considered the long hours she spent over it to be entirely a matter of course; but, by this hour of the night, she had naturally become a little tired of it, and was pleased to let it drop on her knee, and have a talk with Rodie over the fire. It was considered rather ill-bred to go on working, with your head bent over your sewing, when anyone came in. To be sure, it was only her brother, but Elsie was so glad to see him a little earlier than usual, that, though the task she had given herself for the evening was not quite completed, she was glad to let her seam drop upon her knees. “Oh, Rodie, is that you?” she said. “Of course it’s me,” said Rodie. “I suppose you were not looking for anybody else at this hour?” “I am glad you are in so soon,” said Elsie. “And who was that that came with you to the door? Not Johnny Wemyss. I could tell by his foot.” “What have you to do with men’s feet?” said Rodie, glad to find something to spend a little of his wrath upon. “Lassies must have tremendously little to think of. I am sure I would never think if it was one person’s foot, or another, if I were sitting at home like you.” “Well,” said Elsie, “you never do sit at home, so you cannot tell. I just notice them because I cannot help it. One foot is so different from another, almost as much as their voices. But what is the matter with you, Rodie? Have you been quarrelling with somebody? You look as if you were in a very ill key.” “I wonder who wouldn’t be in an ill key? There is that feckless gomeril, Frank Mowbray----” (“Oh, it was Frank Mowbray?” Elsie interjected in an undertone)--“going on about debts and nonsense, and folk in the town that owe him money, and that he’s coming to my father to ask him who they are; as if my father would go and split upon poor bodies that borrowed from old Anderson. I had it in my heart,” cried Rodie, striking with his heel a piece of coal that was smouldering in the grate, and breaking it up into a hundred blazing fragments--“I had it in my heart to take him by the two shoulders, and fling him out like potato peelings into the road.”