at I shall
not go on expecting a mythic major!"

Rachel, never understanding playfulness, thought this both audacious
and unnecessary, and if it had come from any one else, would have
administered a snub, but she felt the invalid sacred from her weapons.

"Have you ever seen the boys?" asked Colonel Keith. "I am rather proud
of Conrade, my pupil; he is so chivalrous towards his mother."

"Alison has brought down a division or two to show me. How much alike
they are."

"Exactly alike, and excessively unruly and unmanageable," said Rachel.
"I pity your sister."

"More unmanageable in appearance than in reality," said the colonel:
"there's always a little trial of strength against the hand over them,
and they yield when they find it is really a hand. They were wonderfully
good and considerate when it was an object to keep the house quiet."

Rachel would not encourage him to talk of Lady Temple, so she turned to
Ermine on the business that had brought her, collecting and adapting
old clothes for emigrants.--It was not exactly gentlemen's pastime, and
Ermine tried to put it aside and converse, but Rachel never permitted
any petty consideration to interfere with a useful design, and as
there was a press of time for the things, she felt herself justified in
driving the intruder off the field and outstaying him. She succeeded; he
recollected the desire of the boys that he should take them to inspect
the pony at the "Jolly Mariner," and took leave with--"I shall see you
to-morrow."

"You knew him all the time!" exclaimed Rachel, pausing in her unfolding
of the Master Temples' ship wardrobe. "Why did you not say so?"

"We did not know his name. He was always the 'Major.'"

"Who, and what is he?" demanded Rachel, as she knelt before her victim,
fixing those great prominent eyes, so like those of Red Riding Hood's
grandmother, that Ermine involuntarily gave a backward impulse to her
wheeled chair, as she answered the readiest thing that occurred to
her,--"He is brother to Lord Keith of Gowan-brae."

"Oh," said Rachel, kneeling on meditatively, "that accounts for it. So
much the worse. The staff is made up of idle honourables."

"Quoth the 'Times!'" replied Ermine; "but his appointment began on
account of a wound, and went on because of his usefulness--"

"Wounded! I don't like wounded heroes," said Rachel; "people make such a
fuss with them that they always get spoilt."

"This was nine years ago, so you may forget it