mother wad grudge me the milk ye wad gie me. It was but my'sel' 'at
didna think mysel' worthy o' that same, seein' it's no a week yet
sin' bonny Hawkie dee'd!"

"An' wad ye hae the Lord's anintit depen' upo' Hawkie?" cried
Grizzie with indignation.

The contest went no farther, and Grizzie had had the best of it, as
none knew better than she. In a minute or two the laird rose and
went out, and Cosmo went with him.

Before Cosmo's mother died, old Mrs. Warlock would have been
indignant at the idea of sitting in the kitchen, but things had
combined to bring her to it. She found herself very lonely seated
in state in the drawing-room, where, as there was no longer a
daughter-in-law to go and come, she learned little or nothing of
what was doing about the place, and where few that called cared to
seek her out, for she had never been a favourite with the humbler
neighbours. Also, as time went on, and the sight of money grew
rarer and rarer, it became more desirable to economize light in the
winter. They had not come to that with firing, for, as long as
there were horses and intervals of less labour on the farm, peats
were always to be had--though at the same time, the drawing-room
could not be made so warm as the kitchen. But for light, even for
train-oil to be burned in the simplest of lamps, money had to be
paid--and money was of all ordinary things the seldomest seen at
Castle Warlock. From these operative causes it came by degrees,
that one winter, for the sake of company, of warmth, of economy,
Mistress Warlock had her chair carried to the kitchen; and the
thing once done, it easily and naturally grew to a custom, and