Despite the Laird’s profound ingenuity, we knew very well who that doctor was. And we had learned something about the affection which this mythical physician had acquired for this imaginary patient. "What a sensitive bit crayture she is!" said he, suddenly, as if he were now talking of some quite different person. "Have ye seen the difference the last few days have made on her face—have ye not observed it?" "Yes, indeed I have." "Ye would imagine that her face was just singing a song from the morning till the night—I have never seen any one with such expressive eyes as that bit lass has—and—and—it is fairly a pleasure to any one to look at the happiness of them." "Which she owes to you, sir." "To me?" said the Laird. "Dear me!—not to me. It was a fortunate circumstance that I was with ye on board the yacht, that is all. What I did no man who had the chance could have refused to do. No, no; if the lass owes any gratitude to anybody or anything it is to the Semple case." "What?" "Just so, ma’am," said the Laird composedly. "I will confess to ye that a long holiday spent in sailing had not that attraction for me it might have had for others—though I think I have come to enjoy it now with the best of ye; but I thought, when ye pressed me to come, that it would be a grand opportunity to get your husband to take up the Semple case, and master it thoroughly, and put its merits in a just manner before the public. That he does not appear to be as much interested in it as I had reason to expect is a misfortune—perhaps he will grow to see the importance of the principles involved in it in time; but I have ceased to force it on his attention. In the meanwhile we have had a fine, long holiday, which has at least given me leisure to consider many schemes for the advantage of my brother pareeshioners. Ay; and where is Miss Mary though?" "She and Angus have been up for hours, I believe," said his hostess. "I heard them on deck before we started anyway." "I would not disturb them," said the Laird, with much consideration. "They have plenty to talk about—all their life opening up before them—like a road through a garden, as one might say. And whatever befalls them hereafter I suppose they will always remember the present time as the most beautiful of their existence—the wonder of it, the newness, the hope. It is a strange thing that. Ye know, ma’am, that our garden at Denny-mains, if I may say so, is far from insigneeficant. It has been greatly commended by experienced landscape gardeners. Well, now, that garden, when it is just at its fullest of summer colour—with all its dahlias and hollyhocks and what not—I say ye cannot get half as much delight from the whole show as ye get from the first glint o’ a primrose, as ye are walking through a wood, on a bleak March day, and not expecting to see anything of the kind. Does not that make your heart jump?" Here the Laird had to make way for Master Fred and the breakfast tray.