Ailie to the deed.

"We have quite made up our minds to let T. have the money," she said,
"but--but the difficulty is the taking it to him. Must we take it in
person?"

"Why not?" asked Ivie, bewildered.

"It would be such a painful meeting to us." said Miss Ailie.

"And to him," added simple Miss Kitty.

"You see we have thought it best not to--not to know him," said Miss
Ailie, faintly.

"Mother--" faltered Miss Kitty, and at the word the eyes of both ladies
began to fill.

Then, of course, Mr. McLean discovered the object of their visit, and
promised that his brother should take this delicate task off their
hands, and as he bowed them out he said, "Ladies, I think you are doing
a very foolish thing, and I shall respect you for it all my life." At
least Miss Kitty insisted that respect was the word, Miss Ailie thought
he said esteem.

That was how it began, and it progressed for nearly a year at a rate
that will take away your breath. On the very next day he met Miss Kitty
in High Street, a most awkward encounter for her ("for, you know, Ailie,
we were never introduced, so how could I decide all in a moment what to
do?"), and he raised his hat (the Misses Croall were at their window and
saw the whole thing). But we must gallop, like the friendship. He bowed
the first two times, the third time he shook hands (by a sort of
providence Miss Kitty had put on her new mittens), the fourth, fifth,
and sixth times he conversed, the seventh time he--they replied that
they really could not trouble him so much, but he said he was going that
way at any rate; the eighth time, ninth time, and tenth time the figures
of two ladies and a gentleman might have been observed, etc., and either
the eleventh or twelfth time ("Fancy our not being sure, Ailie"--"It has
all come so quickly, Kitty") he took his first dish of tea at Magenta
Cottage.

There were many more walks after this, often along the cliffs to a
little fishing village, over which the greatest of magicians once
stretched his wand, so that it became famous forever, as all the world
saw except himself; and tea at the cottage followed, when Ivie asked
Miss Kitty to sing "The Land o' the Leal," and Miss Ailie sat by the
window, taking in her merino, that it might fit Miss Kitty, cutting her
sable muff (once Alison Sibbald's) into wristbands for Miss Kitty's
astrakhan; they did not go quite all the way round, but men are blind.

Ivie was not altogether blind. The siste