a light in dark days, a joy in sorrowful times, which nothing was able
to take away from her.

And this was the little girl who used to knock gently at the door of
Granny Baxter's cottage every morning as she passed along the road to
school, arrayed in her pretty grey stuff frock, and with her snowy linen
tippet and sun-bonnet. Sometimes she found little Jean's round smiling
face peering against the peat-stack at the end of the cottage awaiting
her coming, for a great friendship had sprung up between these two,
though they were certainly very different in character. Elsie seemed to
have a brooding protective care over the little unkempt Jean, exercising
a sort of guardianship of her in the new life at school. She would often
come to her rescue when Jean sat pouting over a blurred slate, en which
she was helplessly trying to reproduce the figures on the blackboard, or
give her timely aid amid the involvements of some question in the
Shorter Catechism. It was Elsie who tied the bonnet-strings now, with
more dexterous fingers than Geordie's, and performed many similar kindly
offices besides; and little Jean was already learning from the
forester's daughter many habits of tidiness which her poor, failing
grandmother had not been capable of teaching her.

Sometimes, on their way from school, the girls would find Geordie
perched on the paling of one of Gowrie's fields, while the cattle grazed
within the fences, watching for their coming to enliven a lonely hour
with their talk and news of school doings. His eye used to glisten with
pride and pleasure as he watched the little Jean appear, carrying her
books and slate, and already bearing many traces of civilising
influences. And it is not to be wondered at if his eye rested with
admiration sometimes on the sweet maiden, who was generally her
companion, and that he learnt to watch eagerly for the first glimpse of