ase a New Year's gift for Isa Keith with the sixpence you gave me
for being patient in the measles; and I would like to choose it myself.'
I do not remember her speaking afterwards, except to complain of her
head, till just before she expired, when she articulated, 'O
mother! mother!'"

Do we make too much of this little child, who has been in her grave in
Abbotshall. Kirkyard these fifty and more years? We may of her
cleverness,--not of her affectionateness, her nature. What a picture the
_animosa infans_ gives us of herself, her vivacity, her passionateness,
her precocious love-making, her passion for nature, for swine, for all
living things, her reading, her turn for expression, her satire, her
frankness, her little sins and rages, her great repentances. We don't
wonder Walter Scott carried her off in the neuk of his plaid, and
played himself with her for hours....

We are indebted for the following--and our readers will be not unwilling
to share our obligations--to her sister:--"Her birth was 15th January,
1803; her death 19th December, 1811. I take this from her Bibles. I
believe she was a child of robust health, of much vigor of body, and
beautifully formed arms, and until her last illness, never was an hour
in bed. She was niece to Mrs. Keith, residing in No. 1 North Charlotte
Street, who was _not_ Mrs. Murray Keith, although very intimately
acquainted with that old lady....

"As to my aunt and Scott, they were on a very intimate footing. He asked
my aunt to be godmother to his eldest daughter Sophia Charlotte. I had a
copy of Miss Edgeworth's 'Rosamond' and 'Harry and Lucy' for long, which
was 'a gift to Marjorie from Walter Scott,' probably the first edition
of that attractive series, for it wanted 'Frank,' which is always now
published as part of the series under the title of 'Early Lessons.' I
regret to say these little volumes have disappeared."

Sir Walter was no relation of Marjorie's, but of the Keiths, through the
Swintons; and like Marjorie, he stayed much at Ravelstone in his early
days, with his grand-aunt Mrs. Keith....

We cannot better end than in words from this same pen:--"I have to ask
you to forgive my anxiety in gathering up the fragments of Marjorie's
last days, but I have an almost sacred feeling to all that pertains to
her. You are quite correct in stating that measles were the cause of her
death. My mother was struck by the patient quietness manifested by
Marjorie during this illness,