“She’s a bonnie creature, and he’s a wise-like man.” Elsie, who had always an ear for what was going on, took in all these comments, and the aspect of affairs generally without really knowing what she heard and saw. But there was one episode which, above all, caught that half attention which imprints a scene on the memory we cannot tell how. At the house door, Frank Mowbray, with the slipper in his hand, very proud of that piece of fashion and prettiness, stood stretching himself to his full height (which was not great), and preparing for his throw. While at the same moment she caught sight of a very different figure close to the chaise watching the crowd, which was Johnny Wemyss, the friend for whom Rodie her own brother had deserted her, and whom, consequently, she regarded with no favourable eyes. He was a tall weedy boy, with long arms growing out of his jacket-sleeves, and that look of loose-jointed largeness which belongs to a puppy in all varieties of creation. He was in his Sunday clothes and bareheaded, and as Marion walked across the pavement, he stooped down and laid before the steps of the chaise a large handful of flowers. The bride gave an astonished look, and then a nod and a smile to the rough lad, who rose up, red as fire with the shamefacedness of his homage, and disappeared behind the crowd. It was only the affair of a moment, and probably very few people noticed it at all. But Elsie saw it, and her face burned with sympathetic excitement. She was pushed back at almost the same moment by the sudden action of Frank, throwing his missile, and then, amid laughter, crying, and cheers, the post-chaise drove away. “My dear,” said Mr. Buchanan, a few minutes after, “some bairn has dropped its flowers on the pavement, or perhaps it was Marion that let them fall. Send one of the women out to clear them away; it has a disorderly look before the door,” the minister said. Elsie did not know what made her do it, but she darted out in her white frock among the dispersing crowd, and gathered up, with her own hands, the flowers on which Marion had set her foot. She took a rose from among them and put it into her own belt. They were, I fear, dusty and soiled, and only fit, as Mr. Buchanan said, to be swept away, but it was to Elsie the only touch of poetry in the whole business. Bride and bridegroom were very sober persons, scarcely worthy, perhaps, to tread upon flowers, which, indeed, Mr. Matthew Sinclair had avoided by kicking them (though gently) out of his way. But Elsie felt the unusual tribute, if no one else did. She gave a glance round for Johnny Wemyss, and caught him as he cast back a furtive glance from behind the shadow of a burly fisherman. And again the boy grew red, and so did she. They had a secret between them from that day, and everybody knows, who has ever been sixteen, what a bond that is, a bond for life.