s that would devour their object, and yet
childlike and fearless. And that is a mouth that will not be soon
satisfied with love; it has a curious likeness to Scott's own, which has
always appeared to us his sweetest, most mobile and speaking feature.

There she is, looking straight at us as she did at him,--fearless and
full of love, passionate, wild, willful, fancy's child.

* * * * *

There was an old servant, Jeanie Robertson, who was forty years in her
grandfather's family. Marjorie Fleming--or as she is called in the
letters and by Sir Walter, Maidie--was the last child she kept. Jeanie's
wages never exceeded L3 a year, and when she left service she had saved
L40. She was devotedly attached to Maidie, rather despising and
ill-using her sister Isabella, a beautiful and gentle child. This
partiality made Maidie apt at times to domineer over Isabella. "I
mention this," writes her surviving sister, "for the purpose of telling
you an instance of Maidie's generous justice. When only five years old,
when walking in Raith grounds, the two children had run on before, and
old Jeanie remembered they might come too near a dangerous mill-lade.
She called to them to turn back. Maidie heeded her not, rushed all the
faster on, and fell, and would have been lost, had her sister not pulled
her back, saving her life, but tearing her clothes. Jeanie flew on
Isabella to 'give it her' for spoiling her favorite's dress; Maidie
rushed in between, crying out, 'Pay (whip) Maidie as much as you like,
and I'll not say one word; but touch Isy, and I'll roar like a bull!'
Years after Maidie was resting in her grave, my mother used to take me
to the place, and told the story always in the exact same words." This
Jeanie must have been a character. She took great pride in exhibiting
Maidie's brother William's Calvinistic acquirements when nineteen months
old, to the officers of a militia regiment then quartered in Kirkcaldy.
This performance was so amusing that it was often repeated, and the
little theologian was presented by them with a cap and feathers.
Jeanie's glory was "putting him through the carritch" (catechism) in
broad Scotch, beginning at the beginning with "Wha made ye, ma bonnie
man?" For the correctness of this and the three next replies, Jeanie had
no anxiety; but the tone changed to menace, and the closed _nieve_
(fist) was shaken in the child's face as she demanded, "Of what are you
made?" "DIRT,"