Into the stern weather of their need had stolen a summer-day to keep hope alive. Cosmo gave up his writing, and spent all the time he had at home in waiting with mind and body upon his father. He read to him--sometimes his own poetry,--and that his father liked best of all, because therein he came nearer to his boy; now and then, when he was too weary for thought, he would play backgammon with him; and sometimes, when he was himself more tired than usual, would get Grizzie to come and tell yet again the stories she used to tell him when he was a child--some of which his father enjoyed the more that he remembered having heard them when he was himself a child. Upon one of these occasions, Grizzie brought from her treasury a tale which the laird remembered his grandmother’s saying she too had heard when she was a child, and therewith it came into Cosmo’s head to write it out, as nearly as he could, in Grizzie’s words, and try a magazine with it. For the first time he received an answer--the most agreeable part of which was a small cheque, and the next most agreeable the request that he would send another paper of like character. Grizzie’s face, when she learned in what way, and how largely, as it seemed to her, she had commenced contributing to the income of the family, was a sight worth a good deal more than a good dinner to both father and son. At first she imagined Cosmo was making game of her, and stood upon the dignity of her legends; but convinced at length of the fact of the case, she stared into nowhere for a minute, and then said, “Eh, sirs! Oot o’ the moo’ o’ babes an’ sucklin’s! The Lord be praist, whan herts is raist!” “Amen, Grizzie!” responded the laird. “Eh, wuman! gien ever ane wan a place in a faimily, her ain by foreordeenment o’ the fatherly providence ’at luiks efter the faimilies o’ men, Grizzie, ye’re that wuman!” Word to please Grizzie better the laird could not have found. It sunk in and in, for her pleasure could make no show, there being no room for any growth in the devotion of her ministrations. And now Cosmo would take no more of the Gracies’ milk, but got Aggie to go every day to a farm near, and buy what was required for his father, and Aggie was regular as the clock, sunshine or storm.