s always quiet. During his father's lifetime it
was diversified by frequent changes of abode within a very narrow
circuit.

The writer has seen some half-dozen small houses, in a rather unlovely
suburb of Aberdeen, all within sight of each other, which had
successively been inhabited by Lieutenant Burton and his family; the
poor invalid craving for the real change which might have benefited his
health, and seeking relief, instead, in constant change of house. Mrs
Burton was entitled to an abode at Grandholm as well as her sisters, and
the little family went there occasionally, at least after Lieutenant
Burton's death. The place, which is a rather interesting one, filled a
considerable space in the affections of the children. Its inmates did
not. Clearly sister Eliza never was forgiven for her unfortunate
marriage. Affection for her husband and for his memory prevented her
apologising for it, and her children were not of the sort to apologise
for their existence. A series of petty slights, small unkindnesses,
imbittered the mind of the poverty-stricken widow against her unmarried
sisters, and her feeling was strongly inherited by her children.

A house in Old Aberdeen has been already mentioned as the abode of Mrs
Margaret Brown, Dr Burton's last surviving aunt. This quaint old house
had been purchased by Mrs Brown's grandmother, mother of the laird of
Grandholm, and at the beginning of the century was inhabited by her
maiden daughter Margaret, or, as she was oftener called, Peggy Paton.
This lady lived to the age of ninety, and at her death left her house
and fortune to her niece and name-daughter, Margaret Paton (Mrs Brown),
who in her turn adopted a grand-niece, the daughter already mentioned of
Dr Burton's eldest brother, William,--the same who, having nursed her
aged aunt till her death, in the last year of his life so tenderly
ministered to her uncle, the subject of this notice.

The second in the line of female owners of the old house, Peggy Paton,
was, for the outer world, what George Eliot calls "a charicter"--one of
those distinguishing features of country-town life which the march of
improvement has swept away: a lady by birth, but owing little to
schools or teachers, books or travel: a woman of strong natural
understanding and some wit, who loved her nightly rubber at whist, could
rap out an oath or a strong pleasantry, and whose quick estimates of men
and things became proverbs with the younger generation.