s patience, and caused
Callum to threaten all kinds of dire punishments, which were never
inflicted. But to-night he had been very expeditious, and with good
reason; for hadn't Granny warned him that Isabel might arrive at any
moment? She had come to Kirsty's a few days before, and Weaver Jimmie
had promised that, if the lady who ruled his heart was in a
sufficiently propitious mood to admit of his leaving her door intact,
he would, without fail, bring the little visitor over that evening.

She and Scotty had become quite intimate since the first summer of
their acquaintance. Miss Isabel was possessed of a vitality and high
spirits that sometimes became unbearable to her invalid aunt; so every
summer, to her own delight and Miss Herbert's relief, she was packed
off to the home of her old nurse. For Kirsty John's mother had been a
servant in the Herbert family in her youth; and when the little Isabel
had been left an orphan in the Captain's family, Kirsty herself had
been nurse-maid to both her and Captain Herbert's little son.
Sometimes, too, during the winter, when her cousin was away at school,
the child came for a lengthy visit to her Highland home, for Miss
Herbert had often to go to the city for medical attendance, and her
brother always accompanied her, glad of an opportunity to be with his
son. Indeed, the family at Lake Oro had what Kirsty called a bad habit
of "stravogin'." She declared they were always "jist here-away
there-away," and never settled down like decent folk in one place. But
then there was no accounting for the ways of the gentry, and these
people were half English and half Irish, anyway, and what could a body
expect? She was thankful herself that the wee bit lassock had some
good Scotch blood in her, anyway. Kirsty often shook her head over her
little charge, declaring that if the father or mother had lived, or
even the Captain's wife, who was a smart, tidy body, even if she was a
lady, the wee one would have had better care. Not but that the
Captain's folk were fond of the lamb; Kirsty declared it was clean
impossible not to love her; but what with a poor girnin', sick body for
an aunt, and an uncle who was such a gentleman he didn't know whether
the roof was falling in on him or not, was it any wonder the bit thing
was wild?

Whatever neglect Miss Isabel may have suffered troubled her not a whit.
For neglect spelled liberty and always contributed to the general
joyousness of her exi