le
pocket-money. Saxpence in the week would be suffeecient."

"How about their clothes?"

"They would get twa suits a year, wi' the letter G sewed on the
shoulders, so as if they were lost they could be recognized and brocht
back."

"Certainly it is a scheme deserving consideration, and I have no doubt
our geniuses would jump at it; but you must remember that some of them
would have wives."

"Ay, an' some o' them would hae husbands. I've been thinkin' that oot,
an' I daur say the best plan would be to partition aff a pairt o' the
Home for female geniuses."

"Would Parliament elect the members?"

"I wouldna trust them. The election would hae to be by competitive
examination. Na, I canna say wha would draw up the queistions. The
scheme's juist growin' i' my mind, but the mair I think o't the better
I like it."

CHAPTER XVIII

LEEBY AND JAMIE

By the bank of the Quharity on a summer day I have seen a barefooted
girl gaze at the running water until tears filled her eyes. That was
the birth of romance. Whether this love be but a beautiful dream I
cannot say, but this we see, that it comes to all, and colours the
whole future life with gold. Leeby must have dreamt it, but I did not
know her then. I have heard of a man who would have taken her far away
into a county where the corn is yellow when it is still green with us,
but she would not leave her mother, nor was it him she saw in her
dream. From her earliest days, when she was still a child staggering
round the garden with Jamie in her arms, her duty lay before her,
straight as the burying-ground road. Jess had need of her in the
little home at the top of the brae, where God, looking down upon her as
she scrubbed and gossipped and sat up all night with her ailing mother,
and never missed the prayer-meeting, and adored the minister, did not
perhaps think her the least of His handmaids. Her years were less than
thirty when He took her away, but she had few days that were altogether
dark. Those who bring sunshine to the lives of others cannot keep it
from themselves.

The love Leeby bore for Jamie was such that in their younger days it
shamed him. Other laddies knew of it, and flung it at him until he
dared Leeby to let on in public that he and she were related.

"Hoo is your lass?" they used to cry to him, inventing a new game.

"I saw Leeby lookin' for ye," they would say; "she's wearyin' for ye to
gang an' play wi' her."

Then if they