smiled at us again from between the two scarlet geraniums, and a

tendril of ivy had been gently curled about his neck to hide the
cruel wound.

After such long, lovely mornings as this, there is a late luncheon
under the shadow of a rock with Salemina and Francesca, an idle

chat, or the chapter of a book, and presently Lady Ardmore and her
daughter Elizabeth drive down to the sands. They are followed by

Robin Anstruther, Jamie, and Ralph on bicycles, and before long the
stalwart figure of Ronald Macdonald appears in the distance, just in

time for a cup of tea, which we brew in Lady Ardmore's bath-house on
the beach.

Chapter XIX. Fowk o' Fife.
`To you I sing, in simple Scottish lays,

The lowly train in life's sequester'd scene;
The native feelings strong, the guileless ways.'

The Cotter's Saturday Night.
We have lived in Pettybaw a very short time, but I see that we have

already made an impression upon all grades of society. This was not
our intention. We gave Edinburgh as our last place of residence,

with the view of concealing our nationality, until such time as we
should choose to declare it; that is, when public excitement with

regard to our rental of the house in the loaning should have lapsed
into a state of indifference. And yet, modest, economical, and

commonplace as has been the administration of our affairs, our
method of life has evidently been thought unusual, and our conduct

not precisely the conduct of other summer visitors. Even our daily
purchases, in manner, in number, and in character, seem to be looked

upon as eccentric, for whenever we leave a shop, the relatives of
the greengrocer, flesher, draper, whoever it may be, bound

downstairs, surround him in an eager circle, and inquire the latest
news.

In an unwise moment we begged the draper's wife to honour us with a
visit and explain the obliquities of the kitchen range and the

tortuosities of the sink-spout to Miss Grieve. While our landlady
was on the premises, I took occasion to invite her up to my own

room, with a view of seeing whether my mattress of pebbles and iron-
filings could be supplemented by another of shavings or straw, or

some material less provocative of bodily injuries. She was most
sympathetic, persuasive, logical and after the manner of her kind

proved to me conclusively that the trouble lay with the too-saft
occupant of the bed, not with the bed itself, and gave me statistics

with regard to the latter which established its reputation and at
the same moment destroyed my own.

She looked in at the various doors casually as she passed up and
down the stairs,--all save that of the dining-room, which Francesca

had prudently locked to conceal the fact that we had covered the
family portraits,--and I noticed at the time that her face wore an

expression of mingled grief and astonishment. It seemed to us
afterward that there was a good deal more passing up and down the

loaning than when we first arrived. At dusk especially, small
processions of children and young people walked by our cottage and

gave shy glances at the windows.
Finding Miss Grieve in an unusually amiable mood, I inquired the

probable cause of this phenomenon. She would not go so far as to
give any judicial opinion, but offered a few conjectures.

It might be the tirling-pin; it might be the white satin ribbons on
the curtains; it might be the guitars and banjos; it might be the

bicycle crate; it might be the profusion of plants; it might be the
continual feasting and revelry; it might be the blazing fires in a

Pettybaw summer. She thought a much more likely reason, however,
was because it had become known in the village that we had moved

every stick of furniture in the house out of its accustomed place
and taken the dressing-tables away from the windows,--'the windys,'

she called them.
I discussed this matter fully with Mr. Macdonald later on. He

laughed heartily, but confessed, with an amused relish of his
national conservatism, that to his mind there certainly was

something radical, advanced, and courageous in taking a dressing-
table away from its place, back to the window, and putting it

anywhere else in a room. He would be frank, he said, and
acknowledge that it suggested an undisciplined and lawless habit of

thought, a disregard for authority, a lack of reverence for
tradition, and a riotous and unbridled imagination.

This view of the matter gave us exquisite enjoyment.
"But why?" I asked laughingly. "The dressing-table is not a sacred

object, even to a woman. Why treat it with such veneration? Where
there is but one good light, and that immediately in front of the

window, there is every excuse for the British custom, but when the
light is well diffused, why not place the table where-ever it looks

well?"
"Ah, but it doesn't look well anywhere but back to the window," said

Mr. Macdonald artlessly. "It belongs there, you see; it has
probably been there since the time of Malcolm Canmore, unless

Margaret was too pious to look in a mirror. With your national love
of change, you cannot conceive how soothing it is to know that

whenever you enter your gate and glance upward, you will always see
the curtains parted, and between them, like an idol in a shrine, the

ugly wooden back of a little oval or oblong looking-glass. It gives
one a sense of permanence in a world where all is fleeting."

The public interest in our doings seems to be entirely of a friendly
nature, and if our neighbours find a hundredth part of the charm and

novelty in us that we find in them, they are fortunate indeed, and
we cheerfully sacrifice our privacy on the altar of the public good.

A village in Scotland is the only place I can fancy where
housekeeping becomes an enthralling occupation. All drudgery

disappears in a rosy glow of unexpected, unique, and stimulating
conditions. I would rather superintend Miss Grieve, and cause the

light of amazement to gleam ten times daily in her humid eye, than
lead a cotillion with Willie Beresford. I would rather do the

marketing for our humble breakfasts and teas, or talk over the day's
luncheons and dinners with Mistress Brodie of the Pettybaw Inn and

Posting Establishment, than go to the opera.
Salemina and Francesca do not enjoy it all quite as intensely as I,

so they considerately give me the lion's share. Every morning,
after an exhilarating interview with the Niobe of our kitchen (who

thinks me irresponsible, and prays Heaven in her heart I be no
worse), I put on my goloshes, take my umbrella, and trudge up and

down the little streets and lanes on real and, if need be, imaginary
errands. The Duke of Wellington said, `When fair in Scotland,

always carry an umbrella; when it rains, please yourself,' and I
sometimes agree with Stevenson's shivering statement, `Life does not

seem to me to be an amusement adapted to this climate.' I quoted
this to the doctor yesterday, but he remarked with some surprise

that he had not missed a day's golfing for weeks. The chemist
observed as he handed me a cake of soap, `Won'erful blest in

weather, we are, mam,' simply because, the rain being unaccompanied
with high wind, one was enabled to hold up an umbrella without

having it turned inside out. When it ceased dripping for an hour at
noon, the greengrocer said cheerily, `Another grand day, mam!' I

assented, though I could not for the life of me remember when the
last one occurred. However, dreary as the weather may be, one

cannot be dull when doing one's morning round of shopping in
Pettybaw or Strathdee. I have only to give you thumb-nail sketches

of our favourite tradespeople to convince you of that fact.
. . . .

We bought our first groceries of Mrs. Robert Phin, of Strathdee,
simply because she is an inimitable conversationalist. She is

expansive, too, about family matters, and tells us certain of her
`mon's' faults which it would be more seemly to keep in the safe

shelter of her own bosom.
Rab takes a wee drappie too much, it appears, and takes it so often

that he has little time to earn an honest penny for his family.
This is bad enough; but the fact that Mrs. Phin has been twice wed

before, and that in each case she innocently chose a ne'er-do-weel
for a mate, makes her a triflecynical. She told me that she had

laid twa husbands in the kirk-yard near which her little shop
stands, and added cheerfully, as I made some sympathetic response,