character; this hurt and surprised me. Naughtiness and frivolity
are different, and I was always deeply in earnest.

Laura was more gentle than I was; and her goodness resolved itself
into greater activity.

She and I belonged to a reading-class. I read more than she did
and at greater speed, but we were all readers and profited by a
climate which kept us indoors and a fine library. The class
obliged us to read an hour a day, which could not be called
excessive, but the real test was doing the same thing at the same
time. I would have preferred three or four hours' reading on wet
days and none on fine, But not so our Edinburgh tutor.

Laura started the Girls' Friendly Society in the village, which
was at that time famous for its drunkenness and immorality. We
drove ourselves to the meetings in a high two-wheeled dog-cart
behind a fast trotter, coming back late in pitch darkness along
icy roads. These drives to Innerleithen and our moonlight talks
are among my most precious recollections.

At the meetings--after reading aloud to the girls while they sewed
and knitted--Laura would address them. She gave a sort of lesson,
moral, social and religious, and they all adored her. More
remarkable at her age than speaking to mill-girls were her Sunday
classes at Glen, in the housekeeper's room. I do not know one girl
now of any age--Laura was only sixteen--who could talk on
religious subjects with profit to the butler, housekeeper and
maids, or to any grown-up people, on a Sunday afternoon.