Yes, Bud had her eye on them all. They never guessed how much they entertained her as they genteelly sipped their tea, or wine, or ginger cordial,—the women of them—or coughed a little too artificially over the New-Year glass—the men.

“Wee Pawkie, that’s what she is—just Wee Pawkie!” said the Provost when he got out, and so far it summed up everything.

The ladies could not tear away home fast enough to see if they had not a remnant of cloth that could be made into such a lovely dress as that of Dyce’s niece for one of their own children. “Mark my words!” they said; “that child will be ruined between them. She’s her father’s image, and he went and married a poor play-actress, and stayed a dozen years away from Scotland, and never wrote home a line.”

So many people came to the house, plainly for no reason but to . . . Read More