cream he could spare and kill half a dozen of the pullets--if you don't
object, Miss Ida?"

Ida's face flushed, and she looked fixedly at the fire. Something
within her protested against the idea of selling the dairy produce to
the new people at Brae Wood; but she struggled against the feeling.

"Oh yes; why not, Jessie?" she said; though she knew well enough.

"Well, miss," replied Jessie, hesitatingly, and with a questioning
glance at her young mistress's averted face, "Jason didn't know at
first; he said that selling the things at the new house was different
to sending 'em to market, and that you mightn't like it; that you might
think it was not becoming."

Ida laughed.

"That's pride on Jason's part; wicked pride, Jessie," she said. "If you
sell your butter and eggs, it can't very much matter whether you sell
them at the market or direct. Oh, yes: tell Jason he can let them have
anything we can spare."

Jessie's face cleared and broke into a smile: she came of a race that
looks after the pennies and loves a good "deal."

"Thank you, miss!" she said, as if Ida had conferred a personal favour.
"And they'll take all we can let 'em have, for they've a mortal sight
of folk up there at Brae Wood. William says that there's nigh upon
fifty bedrooms, and that they'll all be full. His sister is one of the
kitchen-maids--there's a cook from London, quite the gentleman, miss,
with, rings on his fingers and a piano in his own room--and Susie says
that the place is all one mass of ivory and gold, and that some of the
rooms is like heaven--or the queen's own rooms in Windsor Castle."

Ida laughed.

"Susie appears to have an enviable acquaintance with the celestial
regions and the abode of royalty, Jessie."

"Yes, miss; of course, it's only what she've read about 'em. And she
says that Sir Stephen--that's the gentleman as owns it all--is a kind
of king, with his own body servant and a--a--I forget what they call
him; it's a word like a book-case."

"A secretary," suggested Ida.

"Yes, that's it, miss! But that he's quite simple and pleasant-like,
and that he's as easily pleased as if he were a mere nobody. And Susie
says that she runs out after dinner and peeps into the stables, and
that it's full of horses and that there's a dozen carriages, some of
'em grand enough for the Lord Mayor of London; and that there's a head
coachman and eight or nine men and boys under him. I'm thinking, Miss
Ida, that the Court"--the