The crowd was beginning to gravitate towards the new house, and Scotty soon found an excuse to enter also. It hadn't been a dream after all, for she was there, sitting close by Kirsty, holding her hand, and surrounded by the people who made up the more genteel portion of society in the Oa and the Glen. A little space seemed to divide them from the common crowd, and she sat, the recognised centre of the group. Scotty noticed, too, that even Mrs. Cameron, the minister's wife, treated the young lady with bland deference, quite unlike her manner of kind condescension towards the MacDonald girls. As he watched the graceful gestures and easy well-bred air of his late comrade, Scotty was suddenly smitten with a sense of his own shortcomings; he was rough, uncouth, awkward. Isabel belonged to a different sphere; she was far removed from him and his people. It was the first time he had realised the difference, and he felt it just at the moment that it first had power to hurt him. He experienced a sudden return of the old wild ambition that used to shake him in his childhood when Rory played a warlike air. And then he wanted to slip out and go away from the wedding feast and never see Isabel again. He glanced at her again, and felt resentfully that she must surely be guilty of the sin of "pride," which so characterised the class to which she belonged. But he had soon to change his mind. The blue eyes had been glancing eagerly about the room, and as soon as they spied him their owner arose and came crushing through the throng towards him. For though Scotty was distrustful, Isabel's frank simplicity of nature had not changed in her years of absence. Her happiest days had been spent in the Oa, and her return to her old home with its sense of welcome and freedom meant more to the lonely girl than he could realise. Practically she had been brought up among the MacDonalds, and at heart she was one of them. Scotty saw her approach in combined joy and embarrassment, and just as he was trying to efface himself in a corner he found her at his side. She wanted to talk about the good old times, she whispered, as she pulled him down beside her on the low window sill. "They were just the loveliest old times, weren't they, Scotty? And don't you hate to be grown up?" she asked. Hate it? Scotty gloried in it. It was a new birth. He tried to say so, but Isabel shook her head emphatically. "Well, I don't, and you wouldn't in my place, for I can't run in the bush any more. Aunt Eleanor bewails me; she says I've been spoiled by Kirsty, for I can't settle down to a proper life in the city. The backwoods is the best place, isn't it, Scotty?" He drew a long breath. "Do you mean you'd really like to come here and live with--with Kirsty again?" he asked. "Oh, wouldn't I?" she cried, her eyes sparkling so that Scotty had to look away. "It was never dull here. Don't you wish I'd come back, too?"