she curtsied dutifully to the gentry-folk and the beautiful young lady
in the riding-coat.

"Is this all the welcome I am to get?" said I, holding out my hand. "And
have you no more memory of old friends?"

"Keep me! wha's this of it?" she cried, and then, "God's truth, it's the
tautit[19] laddie!"

"The very same," says I.

"Mony's the time I've thocht upon you and your freen, and blithe am I to
see you in your braws,"[20] she cried; "though I kennt ye were come to
your ain folk by the grand present that ye sent me, and that I thank ye
for with a' my heart."

"There," said Miss Grant to me, "run out by with ye, like a good bairn,
I didna come here to stand and baud a candle; it's her and me that are
to crack."

I suppose she stayed ten minutes in the house, but when she came forth
I observed two things--that her eyes were reddened, and a silver brooch
was gone out of her bosom. This very much affected me.

"I never saw you so well adorned," said I.

"O, Davie man, dinna be a pompous gowk!" said she, and was more than
usually sharp to me the remainder of the day.

About candlelight we came home from this excursion.

For a good while I heard nothing further of Catriona--my Miss Grant
remaining quite impenetrable, and stopping my mouth with pleasantries.
At last, one day that she returned from walking, and found me alone in
the parlour over my French, I thought there was something unusual in her
looks; the colour heightened, the eyes sparkling high, and a bit of a
smile continually bitten in as she regarded me. She seemed indeed like
the very spirit of mischief, and, walking briskly in the room, had soon
involved me in a kind of quarrel over nothing and (at the least) with
nothing intended on my side. I was like Christian in the slough--the
more I tried to clamber out upon the side, the deeper I became involved;
until at last I heard her declare, with a great deal of passion, that
she would take that answer at the hands of none, and I must down upon my
knees for pardon.

The causelessness of all this fuff stirred my own bile. "I have said
nothing you can properly object to," said I, "and as for my knees, that
is an attitude I keep for God."

"And as a goddess I am to be served!" she cried, shaking her brown locks
at me and with a bright colour. "Every man that comes within waft of my
petticoats shall use me so!"

"I will go so far as ask your pardon for the fashion's sake, although I
vow I know not why,"