The two elder girls, curious about the pretty cottage, had come
wandering down the spur, or hill-toe, as far as its precincts--if
precincts they may be called where was no fence, only a little grove
and a less garden. Beside the door stood a milk-pail and a churn,
set out to be sweetened by the sun and wind. It was very rural, they
thought, and very homely, but not so attractive as some cottages in
the south:--it indicated a rusticity honoured by the most
unceremonious visit from its superiors. Thus without hesitation
concluding, Christina, followed by Mercy, walked in at the open
door, found a barefooted girl in the kitchen, and spoke pleasantly
to her. She, in simple hospitality forgetting herself, made answer
in Gaelic; and, never doubting the ladies had come to call upon her
mistress, led the way, and the girls, without thinking, followed her
to the parlour.

As they came, they had been talking. Had they been in any degree
truly educated, they would have been quite capable of an opinion of
their own, for they had good enough faculties; but they had never
been really taught to read; therefore, with the utmost confidence,
they had been passing judgment upon a book from which they had not
gathered the slightest notion as to the idea or intention of the
writer. Christina was of that numerous class of readers, who, if you
show one thing better or worse than another, will without hesitation
report that you love the one and hate the other. If you say, for
instance, that it is a worse and yet more shameful thing for a man
to break his wife's heart by systematic neglect, than to strike her
and be sorry for it, such readers give out that you approve of
wife-beating, and perhaps write to expostulate with you on your
brutality. If you express pleasure that a poor maniac should have
succeeded in escaping through the door of death from his haunting