Salemina stopped at one of the tenants' cabins, the other
day, to leave some small comforts that Dr. La Touche had sent to a sick
child. The woman thanked Salemina, and Mrs. Colquhoun heard her say,
'When a man will stop, coming in the doore, an' stoop down to give a
sthroke and a scratch to the pig's back, depend on it, ma'am, him that's
so friendly with a poor fellow-crathur will make ye a good husband.'

"I have given him every opportunity to confide in me," I continued,
after a pause, "but he accepts none of them; and yet I like him a
thousand times better now that I have seen him as the master of his
own house. He is so courtly, and, in these latter days, so genial and
sunny... Salemina's life would not at first be any too easy, I fear; the
aunt is very feeble, and the establishment is so neglected. I went into
Dr. Gerald's study the other day to see an old print, and there was a
buzz-buzz-zzzz when the butler pulled up the blinds. 'Do you mind bees,
ma'am?' he asked blandly. 'There's been a swarm of them in one corner
of the ceiling for manny years, an' we don't like to disturb them.'...
Benella said yesterday: 'Of course, when you three separate, I shall
stay with the one that needs me most; but if Miss Peabody SHOULD settle
over here anywhere, I'd like to take a scrubbing brush an' go through
the castle, or whatever she's going to live in, with soap and sand and
ammonia, and make it water-sweet before she sets foot in it.'... As for
the children, however, no one could regard them as a drawback, for they
are altogether charming; not well disciplined, of course, but lovable
to the last degree. Broona was planning her future life when we were
walking together yesterday. Jackeen is to be 'an engineer, by the
sea,' so it seems, and Broona is to be a farmer's wife with a tiny red
bill-book like Mrs. Colquhoun's. Her little boys and girls will sell the
milk, and when Jackeen has his engineering holidays he will come and
eat fresh butter and scones and cream and jam at the farm, and when her
children have their holidays they will go and play on 'Jackeen's beach.'
It is the little people I rely upon chiefly, after all. I wish you could
have seen them cataract down the staircase to greet her this morning. I
notice that she tries to make me divert their attention when Dr. Gerald
is present; for it is a bit suggestive to a widower to see his children
pursue, hang about, and caress a lovely, unmarried lady. Broona,
especially