.'

'Then she'll know you are not at your prayers.'

'Na. For sometimes I div gang to my prayers for a whilie like, but nae
for lang, for I'm nae like ane o' them 'at he wad care to hear sayin' a
lang screed o' a prayer till 'im. I hae but ae thing to pray aboot.'

'And what's that, Robert?'

One of his silences had seized him. He looked confused, and turned away.

'Never mind,' said Miss St. John, anxious to relieve him, and establish
a comfortable relation between them; 'you will tell me another time.'

'I doobt no, mem,' answered Robert, with what most people would think an
excess of honesty.

But Miss St. John made a better conjecture as to his apparent closeness.

'At all events,' she said, 'don't mind what your grannie may think, so
long as you have no wish to make her think it. Good-night.'

Had she been indeed an angel from heaven, Robert could not have
worshipped her more. And why should he? Was she less God's messenger
that she had beautiful arms instead of less beautiful wings?

He practised his scales till his unaccustomed fingers were stiff, then
shut the piano with reverence, and departed, carefully peeping into the
disenchanted region without the gates to see that no enemy lay in wait
for him as he passed beyond them. He closed the door gently; and in one
moment the rich lovely room and the beautiful lady were behind him, and
before him the bare stair between two white-washed walls, and the
long flagged transe that led to his silent grandmother seated in her
arm-chair, gazing into the red coals--for somehow grannie's fire always
glowed, and never blazed--with her round-toed shoes pointed at them
from the top of her little wooden stool. He traversed the stair and the
transe, entered the parlour, and sat down to his open book as though
nothing had happened. But his grandmother saw the light in his face, and
did think he had just come from his prayers. And she blessed God that he
had put it into her heart to burn the fiddle.

The next night Robert took with him the miniature of his mother, and
showed it to Miss St. John, who saw at once that, whatever might be
his present surroundings, his mother must have been a lady. A certain
fancied resemblance in it to her own mother likewise drew her heart to
the boy. Then Robert took from his pocket the gold thimble, and said,

'This thimmel was my mamma's. Will ye tak it, mem, for ye ken it's o'
nae use to me.'

Miss St. John hesitated for a moment.