ked me if I had not some fancy-work to do. Kirstie had
begun her ties, and Jean the altar-cloth, again.

"Do let Maggie run to your room and fetch it for you," she said.

I was obliged to tell her I never did any. "But I--I can trim hats," I
said; it really seemed awful not to be able to do anything like them, I
felt I must say this as a kind of defence for myself.

However, she seemed to think that hardly a lady's employment.

"How clever of you!" Kirstie exclaimed. "I wish I could, but don't you
find that intermittent? You can't trim them all the time. Don't you feel
the want of a constant employment?"

I was obliged to say I had not felt like that yet, but I could not tell
them I particularly loved sitting perfectly still, doing nothing.

Jessie and Maggie played Patience at two tables which folded up, and which
they brought out and sat down to with a deliberate accustomed look which
made me know at once they did this every night, and that I should see
those tables planted exactly on those two spots of carpet every evening
during my whole stay. I suppose it is because they cannot bring the
poker-work and the bookbinding into the drawing-room.

"Won't you play us something?" Lady Katherine asked, plaintively.
Evidently it was not permitted to do nothing, so I got up and went to the
piano.

Fortunately I know heaps of things by heart, and I love them, and would
have gone on and on, so as to fill up the time, but they all said "Thank
you" in a chorus after each bit, and it rather put me off.

Mr. Montgomerie and Malcolm did not come in for ages, and I could see Lady
Katherine getting uneasy. One or two things at dinner suggested to me that
these two were not on the best terms, perhaps she feared they had come to
blows in the dining-room. The Scotch, Mrs. Carruthers said, have all kinds
of rough customs that other nations do not keep up any longer.

They did turn up at last, and Mr. Montgomerie was purple all over his
face, and Malcolm a pale green, but there were no bruises on him; only one
could see they had had a terrible quarrel.

There is something in breeding, after all, even if one is of a barbarous
country. Lady Katherine behaved so well, and talked charities and politics
faster than ever, and did not give them time for any further outburst,
though I fancy I heard a few "damns" mixed with the "burrrrs," and not
without the "n" on just for ornament, like Lord Robert's.

It was a frightful evening.