Mrs. Hilliard’s letter was not purely inquisitive; she was really softened by the news she had to tell, though she told it in her own manner. Her cousin Catherine was better. She had surmounted the crisis of her illness, and she was not only to live and be well again, she was about to turn over a new leaf—in short, to go a-head and look alive for the rest of her days. Mrs. Hilliard flattered herself _that_ would astonish her readers. The miracle had been worked by the new order of nurse whom the London physician had brought down just in time to their assistance. It had been during the very dismallest part of Catherine’s illness, when Mrs. Hilliard’s sole refuge from the blues on her own account, had been in the anticipation of the inconsistencies and incongruities she was to encounter in the latest specimen of nurse—who is no longer a Sairey Gamp but a beneficent princess in disguise. Now beneficent princesses are charming to think of, but naturally one would suppose they are not the easiest persons to accommodate and entertain. Mrs. Hilliard had, therefore, proposed to lay all the house under contribution for the Sister’s benefit. She had told off her own maid in the stranger’s service. The maid’s mistress had even had some idea of converting herself into an abigail, that she might more fittingly hold pins for her social superior, who was condescending to attend on Catherine. Mrs. Hilliard had arranged levees of all the ladies in Friarton to be held in the Meadows’ drawing-room in honour of the Sister when she was off duty and open to recreation; and sure enough the Sister had turned out to be a daughter of the old lord-lieutenant’s, the county belle of ten years ago; but she had laughed to scorn the words ‘accommodation,’ ‘entertainment,’ and ‘homage.’