It was the first time they had come so close in their talk. The moment his mother spoke out, Ian had responded. He was anxious to be open with her so far as he could, and forced his natural taciturnity, the prime cause of which was his thoughtfulness: it was hard to talk where was so much thinking to be done, so little time to do it in, and so little progress made by it! But wherever he could keep his mother company, there he would not leave her! Just as he opened his mouth, however, to begin his narration, the door of the room also opened, flung wide by the small red hand of Nancy, and two young ladies entered. CHAPTER VIII. A MORNING CALL. Had Valentine known who the brothers were, or where they lived, he would before now have called to thank them again for their kindness to him; but he imagined they had some distance to go after depositing him, and had not yet discovered his mistake. The visit now paid had nothing to do with him. The two elder girls, curious about the pretty cottage, had come wandering down the spur, or hill-toe, as far as its precincts--if precincts they may be called where was no fence, only a little grove and a less garden. Beside the door stood a milk-pail and a churn, set out to be sweetened by the sun and wind. It was very rural, they thought, and very homely, but not so attractive as some cottages in the south:--it indicated a rusticity honoured by the most unceremonious visit from its superiors. Thus without hesitation concluding, Christina, followed by Mercy, walked in at the open door, found a barefooted girl in the kitchen, and spoke pleasantly to her. She, in simple hospitality forgetting herself, made answer in Gaelic; and, never doubting the ladies had come to call upon her mistress, led the way, and the girls, without thinking, followed her to the parlour. As they came, they had been talking. Had they been in any degree truly educated, they would have been quite capable of an opinion of their own, for they had good enough faculties; but they had never been really taught to read; therefore, with the utmost confidence, they had been passing judgment upon a book from which they had not gathered the slightest notion as to the idea or intention of the writer. Christina was of that numerous class of readers, who, if you show one thing better or worse than another, will without hesitation report that you love the one and hate the other. If you say, for instance, that it is a worse and yet more shameful thing for a man to break his wife's heart by systematic neglect, than to strike her and be sorry for it, such readers give out that you approve of wife-beating, and perhaps write to expostulate with you on your brutality. If you express pleasure that a poor maniac should have succeeded in escaping through the door of death from his haunting demon, they accuse you of advocating suicide. But Mercy was not yet afloat on the sea of essential LIE whereon Christina swung to every wave.