"I see Kirsty now!" she called, seating herself upon a log which formed one side of their mansion. "I see her 'way over yonder!" Scotty seated himself beside her, flushed and heated with the unwonted exertions of house-building. "Oh, don't you love Kirsty," she cried, giving him an ecstatic shake. "I do; an' I love you, too, Scotty, you're a dear!" Scotty looked slightly uncomfortable, but not wholly displeased. "Don't you love to run away off in the bush like this, and have nobody to bother you?" she inquired next. "Yes." Scotty could cordially assent to that. "When I get a man," he said, in a sudden burst of confidence, "I'm goin' to live in a wigwam like Big Wind an' shoot bears!" "Oh, my!" she cried in delight. "I wish I could live with you, only I don't want to be an ugly scraw, I want to be like Kirsty when I grow big, an' live up here in the Oa, an' pile hay; but I'll have to be like Auntie Eleanor an' wear a black silk dress, oh, dear!" "Wouldn't you be liking a silk dress?" asked Scotty in surprise. "No!" she cried disdainfully. "You've always got to take care of it. I want a red petticoat like Kirsty wears, and I want to go in my bare feet all the time, and live in the bush." "Don't you go in your bare feet at home?" inquired Scotty in amazement. "No," she admitted mournfully. "Auntie Eleanor says 'tisn't nice for little girls, an' I have to play the piano every morning, an' not make any noise round the house, 'cause you know my poor auntie has headaches all the time. Do you know what's the matter with my auntie?" "No." "Well, don't you tell, it's a big secret; she's got the _heartbreak_!" "The what?" cried Scotty in alarm. "The heartbreak. Brian told me. Brian's our coachman, an' I heard him tell Mary Morrison, the cook, and he told me not to never, _never_ tell; but I'll just tell you, and you won't tell, will you, Scotty?" "No, never. Will it be like the rheumatics Granny has?" "No-o, I 'spect not; it's when you have headaches an' don't smile nor eat much; not even pie!" She gazed triumphantly into Scotty's interested countenance. "That's what my auntie's got." "Would she be catching it at school?" he inquired feelingly, moved by recollections of an epidemic of measles that had raged in Number Nine the winter preceding. "No, she just got it all by herself. She was going to be married in the church, 'way over in England, and she had a beautiful satin dress and a veil and everything, and he didn't come!" "Who?" demanded Scotty. "Why, the gempleman; he was a soldier-man with a grea' big sword, an' he got bad an' went away, an' my auntie got the heartbreak. An' that's why she's sick an' doesn't want me to make a noise or jump." Scotty looked at her in deep sympathy. "Won't she be letting you jump?" he asked in awe.