weather ye are, mam!' The situation is not so bad as it might be," she
added consolingly, "because in case Miss Grieve's toilet should last
longer than usual, your wedding need not be indefinitely postponed, for
Mr. Macdonald can marry you from this window."

Here she disappeared, and we had scarcely time to take in the full
humour of the affair before Robin Anstruther's laughing eyes appeared
over the top of the high brick wall that protects our garden on three
sides.

"Do not shoot," said he. "I am not come to steal the fruit, but to
succour humanity in distress. Miss Monroe insisted that I should borrow
the inn ladder. She thought a rescue would be much more romantic than
waiting for Miss Grieve. Everybody is coming out to witness it, at least
all your guests,--there are no strangers present,--and Miss Monroe is
already collecting sixpence a head for the entertainment, to be given,
she says, for your dear Friar's sustenation fund."

He was now astride of the wall, and speedily lifted the ladder to our
side, where it leaned comfortably against the stout branches of the
draper's peach vine. Willie ran nimbly up the ladder and bestrode the
wall. I followed, first standing, and then decorously sitting down on
the top of it. Mr. Anstruther pulled up the ladder, and replaced it on
the side of liberty; then he descended, then Willie, and I last of all,
amidst the acclamations of the onlookers, a select company of six or
eight persons.

When Miss Grieve formally entered the sitting-room bearing the tea-tray,
she was buskit braw in black stuff gown, clean apron, and fresh cap
trimmed with purple ribbons, under which her white locks were neatly
dressed.

She deplored the coolness of the tea, but accounted for it to me in
an aside by the sickening quality of Mrs. Sinkler's coals and Mr.
Macbrose's kindling-wood, to say nothing of the insulting draft in the
draper's range. When she left the room, I suppose she was unable to
explain the peals of laughter that rang through our circumscribed halls.

Lady Ardmore insists that the rescue was the most unique episode she
ever witnessed, and says that she never understood America until
she made our acquaintance. I persuaded her that this was fallacious
reasoning; that while she might understand us by knowing America, she
could not possibly reverse this mental operation and be sure of the
result. The ladies of Pettybaw House said that the occurrence was as
Fifish as anything that