cream to be whipped. Well, little
one, what now?"

"It's just this dress of Margray's,--mother's right,--'t will never do
for me; I'll wear shadows. But 't will not need the altering of a hair
for you, Mary, and you shall take it."

"I think I see myself," said Mary Strathsay, "wearing the dress Margray
married Graeme in!" For Margray had gone out to my mother in her turn.

"Then it's yours, Effie. I'll none of it!"

"I'm finely fitted out, then, with the robe here and the veil there!
bridal or burial, toss up a copper and which shall it be?" said Effie,
looking upward, and playing with her spools like a juggler's oranges.
And here Margray came back.

She sat in silence a minute or two, turning her work this way and that,
and then burst forth,--

"I'd not stand in your shoes for much, Alice Strathsay!" she cried,
"that's certain. My mother's in a rare passion, and here's Sir Angus
home!"

"Sir Who?" said Effie puzzled; "it was just Mr. Ingestre two years ago."

"Well, it's been Sir Angus a twelvemonth now and more,--ever since old
Sir Brenton went, and he went with a stroke."

"Yes," said Mary, "it was when Angus arrived in London from Edinboro',
the day before joining his ship."

"And why didn't we ever hear of it?"

"I don't just remember, Effie dear," replied Margray, meditatively,
"unless 't were--it must have been--that those were the letters lost
when the Atlantis went down."

"Poor gentleman!" said Mary. "It was one night when there was a division
in the House, and it divided his soul from his body,--for they found him
sitting mute as marble, and looking at their follies and strifes with
eyes whose vision reached over and saw God."

"For shame, Mary Strathsay, to speak lightly of what gave Angus such
grief!"

"Is that lightly?" she said, smoothing my hair with her pretty pink
palms till it caught in the ring she wore. "Never mind what _I_ say,
girlie; it's as like to be one word as the other. But I grieved for him.
He's deep and quiet; a sorrow sinks and underlies all that's over, in
the lad."

"Hear her!" said Margray; "one would fancy the six feet of the Ingestre
stature were but a pocket-piece! The lad! Well, he'll put no pieces in
our pockets, I doubt," (Margray had ever an eye to the main chance,)
"and it's that angers my mother."

"Hush, Margray!" I heard Mary say, for I had risen and stolen forth.
"Thou'lt make the child hate us all. Were we savages, we had said less.
You know, girl,