we came home from this excursion.

For a good while I heard nothing further of Catriona: my Miss Grant
remaining quite impenetrable, and stopping my mouth with pleasantries.
At last, one day that she returned from walking and found me alone in
the parlour over my French, I thought there was something unusual in her
looks; the colour heightened, the eyes sparkling high, and a bit of a
smile continually bitten in as she regarded me. She seemed indeed like
the very spirit of mischief, and walking briskly in the room, had soon
involved me in a kind of quarrel over nothing and (at the least) with
nothing intended on my side. I was like Christian in the slough; the
more I tried to clamber out upon the side, the deeper I became involved;
until at last I heard her declare, with a great deal of passion, that
she would take that answer at the hands of none, and I must down upon my
knees for pardon.

The causelessness of all this fuff stirred my own bile. "I have said
nothing you can properly object to," said I, "and as for my knees, that
is an attitude I keep for God."

"And as a goddess I am to be served!" she cried, shaking her brown locks
at me and with a bright colour. "Every man that comes within waft of my
petticoats shall use me so!"

"I will go so far as ask your pardon for the fashion's sake, although I
vow I know not why," I replied. "But for these play-acting postures, you
can go to others."

"O Davie!" she said. "Not if I was to beg you?"

I bethought me I was fighting with a woman, which is the same as to say
a child, and that upon a point entirely formal.

"I think it a bairnly thing," I said, "not worthy in you to ask, or me
to render. Yet I will not refuse you, neither," said I; "and the stain,
if there be any, rests with yourself." And at that I kneeled fairly
down.

"There!" she cried. "There is the proper station, there is where I have
been manoeuvring to bring you." And then, suddenly, "Kep,"[21] said she,
flung me a folded billet, and ran from the apartment laughing.

The billet had neither place nor date. "Dear Mr. David," it began, "I
get your news continually by my cousin, Miss Grant, and it is a pleisand
hearing. I am very well, in a good place, among good folk, but
necessitated to be quite private, though I am hoping that at long last
we may meet again. All your friendships have been told me by my loving
cousin, who loves us both. She bids me to send you this writing, and
oversees the same. I