nd I fell into each
other's arms and laughed hysterically.

"Nobody need tell me that she is Mrs. M'Collop's sister's husband's
niece," she whispered, "though she may possibly be somebody's
grandaunt. Doesn't she remind you of Mrs. Gummidge?"

Salemina returned in a quarter of an hour, and sank dejectedly on the
sofa.

"Run over to the inn, Francesca," she said, "and order bacon and eggs
at eight-thirty to-morrow morning. Miss Grieve thinks we had better not
breakfast at home until she becomes accustomed to the surroundings."

"Shall we allow her to become accustomed to them?" I questioned.

"She came up from Glasgow to Edinburgh for the day, and went to see
Mrs. M'Collop just as our telegram arrived. She was living with an
'extremely nice family' in Glasgow, and only broke her engagement in
order to try Fifeshire air for the summer; so she will remain with us
as long as she is benefited by the climate."

"Can't we pay her for a month and send her away?"

"How can we? She is Mrs. M'Collop's sister's husband's niece, and we
intend returning to Mrs. M'Collop. She has a nice ladylike appearance,
but when she takes her bonnet off she looks seventy years old."

"She ought always to keep it off, then," returned Francesca, "for she
looked eighty with it on. We shall have to soothe her last moments, of
course, and pay her funeral expenses. Did you offer her a cup of tea
and show her the box-bed?"

"Yes; she said she was muckle obleeged to me, but the coals were so
poor and hard she couldna batter them up to start a fire the nicht,
and she would try the box-bed to see if she could sleep in it. I am
glad to remember that it was you who telegraphed for her, Penelope."

"Let there be no recriminations," I responded; "let us stand shoulder
to shoulder in this calamity,--isn't there a story called 'Calamity
Jane?' We might live at the inn, and give her the cottage for a summer
residence, but I utterly refuse to be parted from our cat and the 1602
lintel."

After I have once described Miss Grieve I shall not suffer her to
begloom these pages as she did our young lives. She is so exactly like
her kind in America that she cannot be looked upon as a national type.
Everywhere we go we see fresh, fair-haired, sonsie lassies; why should
we have been visited with this affliction, we who have no courage in a
foreign land to rid ourselves of it?

She appears at the door of the kitchen with some complaint, and stands
there talkin