he Counsellor,
while I could do nothing else but hold, and bend across, my darling, and
whisper to deaf ears; "What is the good of the quality; if this is
all that comes of it? Out of the way! You know the words that make the
deadly mischief; but not the ways that heal them. Give me that bottle,
if hands you have; what is the use of Counsellors?"

I saw that dear mother was carried away; and indeed I myself was
something like it; with the pale face upon my bosom, and the heaving of
the heart, and the heat and cold all through me, as my darling breathed
or lay. Meanwhile the Counsellor stood back, and seemed a little sorry;
although of course it was not in his power to be at all ashamed of
himself.

"My sweet love, my darling child," our mother went on to Lorna, in a way
that I shall never forget, though I live to be a hundred; "pretty pet,
not a word of it is true, upon that old liar's oath; and if every word
were true, poor chick, you should have our John all the more for it.
You and John were made by God and meant for one another, whatever falls
between you. Little lamb, look up and speak: here is your own John and
I; and the devil take the Counsellor."

I was amazed at mother's words, being so unlike her; while I loved her
all the more because she forgot herself so. In another moment in ran
Annie, ay and Lizzie also, knowing by some mystic sense (which I have
often noticed, but never could explain) that something was astir,
belonging to the world of women, yet foreign to the eyes of men. And now
the Counsellor, being well-born, although such a heartless miscreant,
beckoned to me to come away; which I, being smothered with women, was
only too glad to do, as soon as my own love would let go of me.

"That is the worst of them," said the old man; when I had led him into
our kitchen, with an apology at every step, and given him hot schnapps
and water, and a cigarro of brave Tom Faggus: "you never can say much,
sir, in the way of reasoning (however gently meant and put) but what
these women will fly out. It is wiser to put a wild bird in a cage, and
expect him to sit and look at you, and chirp without a feather rumpled,
than it is to expect a woman to answer reason reasonably." Saying this,
he looked at his puff of smoke as if it contained more reason.

"I am sure I do not know, sir," I answered according to a phrase which
has always been my favourite, on account of its general truth: moreover,
he was now our guest, a