For many weeks, indeed months, her want of strength and weary listlessness caused Mrs. Duncan great anxiety. She used to shake her head and talk vaguely to Jean of young folk who had gone into a waste with naught but fretting, and had been in their graves before their friends realized that they were ill; to which Jean would reply, "'Deed and it is the truth, mistress; and I am thinking it is time that Mrs. St. Clair had her few 'broth.'" For all Jean's sympathy found expression in deeds, not words. Jean seldom dealt largely in soft words; she was somewhat brisk and sharp of tongue--a bit biting, like her moorland breezes in winter time. In spite of her reverential tenderness for Fay, she would chide her quite roughly for what she called her fretting ways. She almost snatched the baby away from her one day when Fay was crying over him. "Ah, my bonny man," she said, indignantly, "would your mither rain tears down on your sweet face, and make you sair-hearted before your time? Whisht, then, my bairn, and Jean will catch the sunshine for you;" and Jean danced him vigorously before the window, while Fay penitently dried her eyes. "Oh, Jean, give him back to me. I did not mean to make him cry; the tears will come sometimes, and I can not keep them back. I will try to be good--I will, indeed." But baby Hugh had no wish to go back to his mother; he was crowing and pulling Jean's flaxen hair, and would not heed Fay's sad little blandishments. "The bairns are like auld folks," remarked Jean, triumphant at her success, and eager to point a moral; "they can not bide what is not bright. There is a time for everything, as Solomon says, 'a time to mourn and a time to dance;' but there is never a time for a bairn to be sair-hearted; neither nature nor Solomon would hold with that, as Master Fergus would say. Ech, sirs! but he is a fine preacher, is Master Fergus." Fay took Jean's reproof very humbly. She shed no more tears when her baby was in her arms. It was touching to see how she strove to banish her grief, that the baby smiles might not be dimmed. Jean would nod her head with grim approval over her pile of finely ironed things as she heard Fay singing in a low sweet voice, and the baby's delighted coos answering her. A lump used to come in Jean's throat, and a suspicious moisture to her keen blue eyes, as she would open the door in the twilight and see the child-mother kneeling down beside the old-fashioned cradle, singing him to sleep. "He likes the songs about the angels best," Fay would say, looking up wistfully in Jean's face. "I sing him all my pretty songs, only not the sad ones. I am sure he loves me to do it." "May be the bairn does not know his mither apart from the women angels," muttered Jean, in a gruff aside, as she laid down her pile of dainty linen. Jean knew more than any one else; she could have told her mistress, if she chose, that it was odd that all Mrs. St. Clair's linen was marked "F. Redmond." But she kept her own counsel.