Another woman was sitting on a three-legged stool, just inside the door, paring potatoes--throwing each, as she cut off what the old lady, watching, judged a paring far too thick, into a bowl of water. She looked nearly as old as her mistress, though she was really ten years younger. She had come with the late mistress from her father’s house, and had always taken, and still took her part against the opposing faction--namely the grandmother. A second seat--not over easy, but comfortable enough, being simply a wide arm-chair of elm, with a cushion covered in horse-hair, stood at the opposite corner of the fire. This was the laird’s seat, at the moment, as generally all the morning till dinner-time, empty: Cosmo, not once looking up, walked straight to it, diagonally across the floor, and seated himself like one verily lost in thought. Now and then, as she peeled, Grizzie would cast a keen glance at him out of her bright blue eyes, round whose fire the wrinkles had gathered like ashes: those eyes were sweet and pleasant, and the expression of her face was one of lovely devotion; but otherwise she was far from beautiful. She gave a grim smile to herself every time she glanced up at him from her potatoes, as much as to say she knew well enough what he was thinking, though no one else did. “He’ll be a man yet!” she said to herself. The old lady also now and then looked over her stocking at the boy, where he sat with his back to the white deal dresser, ornate with homeliest dishes. “It’ll be lang or ye fill that chair, Cossie, my man!” she said at length,--but not with the smile of play, rather with the look of admonition, as if it was the boy’s first duty to grow in breadth in order to fill the chair, and restore the symmetry of the world. Cosmo glanced up, but did not speak, and presently was lost again in the thoughts from which his grandmother had roused him as one is roused by a jolt on the road. “What are you dreaming about, Cossie?” she said again, in a tone wavering but imperative. Her speech was that of a gentlewoman of the old time, when the highest born in Scotland spoke Scotch. Not yet did Cosmo reply. Reverie does not agree well with manners, but it would besides have been hard for him to answer the old lady’s question--not that he did not know something at least of what was going on in his mind, but that, he knew instinctively, it would have sounded in her ears no hair better than the jabber of Jule Sandy. “Mph!” she said, offended at his silence; “Ye’ll hae to learn manners afore ye’re laird o’ Glenwarlock, young Cosmo!”