o was still busy with her
wheel. "Wipe my old eye with your handkerchief. Don't you see I have
laughed my eyes dim at Watty and his gold? And fill my pipe again,
Peggy."

Instead of obeying this command, the mother left her spinning, and ran
with some precipitation towards the door to catch up the child, who had
staggered to the very verge of the sill, where it paused in imminent
peril of falling headlong down the step; and having rescued it from its
danger, she returned with the infant in her arms to a chair, where,
without scruple at the presence of her visitors, she uncovered her bosom
and administered to her off-spring that rich and simple bounty which
nature has so lavishly provided for the sustenance of our first and
tenderest days of helplessness.

"Well-a-day, I see how it is!" muttered the grandmother in an accent of
reproof, "that's the way of the world. Love is like a running river, it
goes downwards, but doesn't come back to the spring. The poor old granny
in the chimney corner is a withered tree up the stream, and the youngest
born is a pretty flower on the bank below. Love leaves the old tree and
goes to the flower. It went from me to Peggy's mother, and so downwards
and downwards, but it never will come back again. The old granny's room
is more wanted than her company; she ought to be nailed up in her coffin
and put to sleep down, down in the cold ground. Well, well! But Watty's
a proud wretch, that's for certain!"

In this strain the aged dame continued to pour forth a stream of
garrulity exhibiting a mixture of the silly dreamings of dotage, with a
curious remainder of the scraps and saws of former experience--a strange
compound of futile drivelling and shrewd and quick sagacity.

During the period of the foregoing dialogue, preparations were making
for supper. These were conducted principally under the superintendence
of our Hebe, who, my reader will recollect, some time since escaped from
the room, and who, as Butler learned, in the course of the evening, was
a niece of Adair's wife and bore the kindly name of Mary Musgrove. The
part which she took in the concerns of the family was in accordance with
the simple manners of the time, and such as might be expected from her
relationship. She was now seen arranging a broad table, and directing
the domestics in the disposition of sundry dishes of venison, bacon, and
corn bread, with such other items of fare as belonged to the sequestered
and forest-boun