, she caught up the niece whom she had so
recently repulsed, and kissed and slapped her, and drove her away again,
and ran after her with pretty cries and laughter. Perhaps she thought
the laird might still be looking! But it chanced the little scene came
under the view of eyes less favourable; for she overtook Mrs. Hob
marching with Clem and Dand.

"You're shurely fey, lass!" quoth Dandie.

"Think shame to yersel', miss!" said the strident Mrs. Hob. "Is this the
gait to guide yersel' on the way hame frae kirk? You're shurely no
sponsible the day! And anyway I would mind my guid claes."

"Hoot!" said Christina, and went on before them, head in air, treading
the rough track with the tread of a wild doe.

She was in love with herself, her destiny, the air of the hills, the
benediction of the sun. All the way home, she continued under the
intoxication of these sky-scraping spirits. At table she could talk
freely of young Hermiston; gave her opinion of him off-hand and with a
loud voice, that he was a handsome young gentleman, real well-mannered
and sensible-like, but it was a pity he looked doleful. Only--the moment
after--a memory of his eyes in church embarrassed her. But for this
inconsiderable check, all through meal-time she had a good appetite, and
she kept them laughing at table, until Gib (who had returned before them
from Crossmichael and his separative worship) reproved the whole of them
for their levity.

Singing "in to herself" as she went, her mind still in the turmoil of a
glad confusion, she rose and tripped upstairs to a little loft, lighted
by four panes in the gable, where she slept with one of her nieces. The
niece, who followed her, presuming on "Auntie's" high spirits, was
flounced out of the apartment with small ceremony, and retired, smarting
and half tearful, to bury her woes in the byre among the hay. Still
humming, Christina divested herself of her finery, and put her treasures
one by one in her great green trunk. The last of these was the
psalm-book; it was a fine piece, the gift of Mistress Clem, in distinct
old-faced type, on paper that had begun to grow foxy in the
warehouse--not by service--and she was used to wrap it in a handkerchief
every Sunday after its period of service was over, and bury it end-wise
at the head of her trunk. As she now took it in hand the book fell open
where the leaf was torn, and she stood and gazed upon that evidence of
her bygone discomposure. There returned a