Marion had been set thinking by the girl’s questions, and was ready to go on talking when Elsie returned with the pile of dinner-napkins in her arms, as high as her chin, which reposed upon them. It had been Mrs. Buchanan’s pride that no minister’s wife in the whole presbytery should have more exquisite linen, and both mother and daughter were gratified to think that the table would be set out for the dinner on the Monday after the Sacrament as few such tables were. The damask was very fine, of a beautiful small pattern, and shone like white satin. Elsie had a little talent for drawing, and she it was who drew the letters which Marion worked; so that this duty afforded occupation for both. “It is a little strange, I do not deny,” said Marion, “that though they make such a work about us when they are courting and so forth, the men are more content in the society of their own kind than we are: a party that is all lassies, you weary of it.” “Not me!” cried Elsie, all aflame. “Wait till you are a little older,” said the sage Marion; “it’s even common to say; though I doubt if it is true, that after dinner we weary for them, if they are too long of coming up-stairs. But they never weary for us: and a man’s party is always the most joyful of all, and they like it above everything, and never wish that we were there. I must say I do not understand how this is, considering how dependent they are upon us for their comfort, and how helpless they are, more helpless than a woman ever is. Now, what my father would do if mamma did not see that he was brushed and trimmed up and kept in order, I cannot tell: and no doubt it will be just the same with Matthew. He will come to me crying, ‘May, there are no handkerchiefs in my drawer,’ or, ‘May, the button’s off my glove,’ as if it was my great fault--and when he is going off to preach anywhere, he will forget his very sermon if I don’t take care it’s put into his portmanteau. “Well, my dear! I am no better than my mother, and that is what she has to do: but when they get a few men together, and can gossip away, and talk, and take their glass of toddy, then is the time when they really enjoy themselves. And so it is with the laddies, or even more--you wish for them, but they don’t wish for you.” “I wish for none of them, except Rodie, my own brother, that has always been my companion,” Elsie said.