he work of some of the "careless hizzies" whom
she was trying to teach. She praised it highly, but she looked at the
child and wondered whether she would live to finish it. There was no
such thought in the mind of Marjorie.

"Mother says that making stockings becomes a pleasant and easy kind of
work when one grows old. And though I canna just say that I like it
very well. I must try and get on with it, for it is one of the things
that must be learned young, ye ken."

"Ay, that's true. And what folk can do weel, they ay come to like to do
in course o' time," said the mistress encouragingly. "I only wish that
Annie Cairns and Jeannie Robb could show work as weel done."

"Oh! but they are different," said the child, a sudden shadow falling on
her face. "If I could run about as they can, I would maybe no' care
about other things."

"Puir wee lammie!" said the mistress.

"Oh! but I'm better than I used to be," said Marjorie, eagerly; "a great
deal better. And I'll maybe be well and strong some day, our Allie
says."

"God grant it, my dear," said the mistress reverently.

"And I have some things to enjoy that the other bairns havena. See, I
have gotten a fine new book here," said Marjorie, mindful of her
mother's warning about speaking much of her trouble to other folk.
"It's a book my father brought home to my mother the last time he was
away. I might read a bit of it to you."

"Ay, do ye that. I will like weel to hear you."

It was "The Course of Time," a comparatively new book in those days, and
one would think a dreary enough one for a child. It was a grand book to
listen to, when her mother read it to her father, Marjorie thought, and
she liked the sound of some of it even when she read it to herself. And
it was the sound of it that the mistress liked as she listened, at least
she was not thinking of the sense, but of the ease and readiness with
which the long words glided from the child's lips. It was about "the
sceptic" that she was reading--the man who had striven to make this fair
and lovely earth.

"A cold and fatherless, forsaken thing that wandered on forlorn,
undestined, unaccompanied, unupheld"; and the mistress had a secret fear
that if the child should stumble among the long words and ask for help,
she might not be able to give it without consideration.

"Ay, it has a fine sound," said she, as Marjorie made a pause. "But I
wad ken better how ye're comin' on wi' your readin' gin ye w