rybody more loyalty and consistency
of feeling than is common in human nature, and crediting everybody with it,
that is in itself a kind of generous severity of expectation which, though
it may be sometimes the cause of mistakes, helps also to create in others
the qualities it looks to find.

The children had plenty of outlets for their high spirits. There are some
slight records left of the opening of a "Theatre Royal, Minto," and of a
glorious evening ending in an "excellent country bumpkin," with bed at two
in the morning; of reels and dances, too, and many hours laconically summed
up as "famous fun" in the diary. Then there were such September days as
this:

"Bob'm [2] and I went in the phaeton to meet the boys. They were
very successful--about twelve brace. The heather was in full blow,
and in wet parts the ground white with parnassia. I never felt such
an air--it made me feel quite wild. The sunset behind the far hills
and reflected in the lonely little shaw loch most beautiful. When
we began our walk there was a fine soft wind that felt as if it
would lift one up to the clouds, but before we got back to the
little house it had quite fallen, and all was as still as in a
desert, except now and then the wild cry of the grouse and
black-cock. Bob'm mad with spirits, and talked nonsense all the way
home. Not too dark to see the beautiful outline of the country all
the way."

[2] Her sister Charlotte, afterwards Lady Charlotte Portal.

Such tired, happy home-comings stay in the memory; drives back at the end
of long days, when scraps of talk and laughter and the pleasure of being
together mingle so kindly with the solemnity of the darkening country;
drives which end in a sudden blaze of welcome, in fire-light and candles,
tea and a hubbub of talk, when everything, though familiar, seems to
confess to a new happiness.

Here is another entry a few days later:

"Beautiful day, but a very high, warm _real Minto_ wind. We
wandered out very late and sat under the lime, playing at being at
sea, feeling the stem rock above us as we lent against it and
hearing the roaring of the waves in the trees. No summer's day can
be better than such a day and evening as this--there was a cloudy
moon, too, above the branches. I wish I could express, but I never
can, the sort of feeling I have at times--now more than I ever had
before--which would sound li