cy ranked the chiefest of all her female friends, surprised us
by a visit. She was a far-removed cousin of Sandy's, who was constantly
back and forth between her own home and Edinburgh by reason of her
everlasting lawing.

It seems that her father had left her some property, and by the advices
of Hugh Pitcairn she had turned this to great advantage, owning bits of
land all over Scotland, from Solway side to John o' Groats.

She was a masculine-looking female, with hair of no particular shade
parted over a face very red in color, and with high cheekbones and
small gray eyes set at an angle like the Chinese folks. She was above
sixty years of age at this time, with a terrible honesty of conduct,
great violence of language, and carried things with a high hand
wherever she went.

Having heard of Nancy from Hugh Pitcairn four or five years before
this, she had demanded to make her acquaintance, upon which Hugh
fetched her over to tea one afternoon, and from that time forth she
bore an unending grudge against me, that Nancy was not her own.

"And so ye write," she had asked at this first interview; "I never read
anything ye wrote, but I'm glad to meet in with any woman who has an
aim 'beyond suckling fools and chronicling small-beer.' But ye must be
careful what ye write, my dear," she went on, "or ye'll have the whole
female population of Scotland clattering after ye. Be orthodox, and
never trifle with tales concerning the seventh command. Stick to rhymes
like 'fountain and mountain' and 'airy and fairy,' and such like
things; for ye'll find that the women who tell tales that would make ye
blush, who lead dissolute, unthinking lives, who deceive their
husbands, and smell themselves up with Lily-of-the-Valley-water when
they go to the kirk, will be the hardest upon ye if ye stray from any
accepted thought. They require the correctest thinking in print ye
know!"

I never saw Nancy more pleased with any human being than with this
fire-eating old lady; and when Janet finished her discourse by the
statement, "God be praised! I never read poetry. Shakespeare sickened
me of that. This thing of not saying right out what you mean turns my
stomach. Padding out some lines to make them a bit longer, and chopping
off ends of words to make others shorter, ought to be beneath any
reasoning creature." Nancy put her head on the table and laughed until
I was afraid she would make herself ill.

It was after the luncheon, while Janet was