hem
read aloud, till far into the small hours.

Who can tell what that cordial of pure, healthful intellectual diversion
may have been, even to the burdened father and sick mother at
Blackfaulds! To Chrissy--the very speaking of it made her clasp her
hands over her knee, and her grey eyes to shine out like stars--as
Bourhope thought to himself.

How suggestively Chrissy discoursed of Glendearg, and the widow Elspeth
Glendinning, her two lads, and Martin and Tib Tacket, and the gentle
lady and Mary Avenel. With what breadth, yet precision, she reproduced
pursy Abbot Boniface, devoted Prior Eustace, wild Christie of the
Clinthill, buxom Mysie Hopper, exquisite Sir Percy Shafton, and even
tried her hand to some purpose on the ethereal White Lady. Perhaps
Chrissy enjoyed the reading as much as the great enchanter did the
writing. Like great actors, she had an instinctive consciousness of the
effect she produced. Bourhope shouted with laughter when the
incorrigible Sir Percy, in the disguise of the dairywoman, described his
routing charge as "the milky mothers of the herd." Corrie actually
glanced in affright at the steaming windows and the door ajar, and
pinched Chrissy's arm when she repeated for the last time the words of
the spell:--

"Thrice to the holly brake--
Thrice to the well;--
Wake thee, O wake,
White Maid of Avenel."

The assembly paid Chrissy the highest compliment an assembly can pay a
speaker. They forgot their schemes, their anxieties, themselves even, to
fasten their eyes and hearts on the brown girl--the book dropping from
her hand, but the story written so graphically on her memory. Corrie
was the first to recover herself. "Oh dear!" she cried, "I have forgot I
was to take down my hair for Miss Lothian to point it at eight o'clock,"
and hurried out of the room.

Mrs. Spottiswoode roused herself next, and spoke a few words of
acknowledgment to Chrissy. "Upon my word, Chrissy, your recital has been
quite as good as the play. We are much obliged to you. I am afraid your
throat must be sore; but stay, I have some of the theatre oranges here.
No, bairns, you are not to have any; it is far too late for you to be
up. Dear me; I believe you have been listening to Chrissy's story like
the rest of us!" But Mrs. Spottiswoode was not under any apprehension
about the success of Chrissy's reading. Mrs. Spottiswoode proved this by
immediately leaving Chrissy _tete-a-tete_ with Bourhope while