ty to bequeath
to their offspring should persist in having the largest families.)
These ladies and gentlemen were too numerous to remove, so we obscured
them with trailing branches; reflecting that we only breakfasted in
the room, and the morning meal is easily digested when one lives in
the open air. We arranged flowers everywhere, and bought potted plants
at a little nursery hard by. We apportioned the bedrooms, giving
Francesca the hardest bed,--as she is the youngest, and wasn't here to
choose,--me the next hardest, and Salemina the best; Francesca the
largest looking-glass and wardrobe, me the best view, and Salemina the
biggest bath. We bought housekeeping stores, distributing our
patronage equally between the two grocers; we purchased aprons and
dusters from the rival drapers, engaged bread and rolls from the
baker, milk and cream from the plumber, who keeps three cows,
interviewed the flesher about chops; in fact, no young couple facing
love in a cottage ever had a busier or happier time than we; and at
sundown, when Francesca arrived, we were in the pink of order,
standing under our own lintel, ready to welcome her to Pettybaw. As to
being strangers in a strange land, we had a bowing acquaintance with
everybody on the main street of the tiny village, and were on terms of
considerable intimacy with half a dozen families, including dogs and
babies.

Francesca was delighted with everything, from the station (Pettybaw
Sands, two miles away) to Jane Grieve's name, which she thought as
perfect, in its way, as Susanna Crum's. She had purchased a
"tirling-pin," that old-time precursor of knockers and bells, at an
antique shop in Oban, and we fastened it on the front door at once,
taking turns at risping it until our own nerves were shattered, and
the draper's wife ran down the loaning to see if we were in need of
anything. The twisted bar of iron stands out from the door and the
ring is drawn up and down over a series of nicks, making a rasping
noise. The lovers and ghaists in the old ballads always "tirled at the
pin," you remember; that is, touched it gently.

Francesca brought us letters from Edinburgh, and what was my joy, in
opening Willie's, to learn that he begged us to find a place in
Fifeshire, and as near St. Rules or Strathdee as convenient; for in
that case he could accept an invitation he had just received to visit
his friend Robin Anstruther, at Rowardennan Castle.

"It is not the visit at the castle