her! It might be from sheer perversity, but she had never been like
that before! She must take care she did not make a fool of herself!
It might end in some unhappiness to the young goose! Assuredly
neither her father nor mother would countenance the thing! She must
throw herself into the breach! But which of them was she taking a
fancy to?

She was not so anxious about her sister, however, as piqued that she
had not herself gathered one expression of homage, surprised one
look of admiration, seen one sign of incipient worship in either. Of
the two she liked better the ploughman! The other was more a man of
the world--but he was not of her world! With him she was a stranger
in a very strange land!

Christina's world was a very small one, and in its temple stood her
own image. Ian belonged to the universe. He was a gentleman of the
high court. Wherever he might go throughout God's worlds, he would
be at home. How could there be much attraction between Christina and
him?

Alister was more talkative on the way back than he had been all day.
Christina thought the change caused by having them, or rather her,
to himself alone; but in reality it sprang from the prospect of soon
rejoining his brother without them. Some of the things he said,
Mercy found well worth hearing; and an old Scotch ballad which he
repeated, having learned it of a lowland nurse, appeared to her as
beautiful as it was wild and strange. For Christina, she despised
the Scotch language: it was vulgar! Had Alister informed her that
Beowulf, "the most important of all the relics of the Pagan
Anglo-Saxon, is written in undeniable Scotch, the English of the