“Dear mother,” replied the young girl carelessly, “if there is to be no maid but poor Tamar, why should not the kitchen be the happiest place, for her own dear mother?  You shall have your chair in the corner, between the window and the fire-place, and your little work-table by it, and then you can direct me without moving from your needle.  Oh! dear, aunt Margaret,” she added, “I am beginning to think that we shall be happier in the cottage, than we have been in the Castle; we shall have fewer cares, and shall have a pleasure in putting our small means to the best.  Do not the scatterings of the flock, aunt Margaret, make us as warm hose as the prime of the fleece?”

“That may be doubted child,” replied the old lady with a smile, “but go young creature, take your way; I believe ere yet you have done, that you, with your sunny smile, will cheat me into contentment before I know what I am about; but mind, my lovely one,” she added, “I will tell you how it is.  I have been led to see how God in his displeasure,—­displeasure, I say, on account of the pride of ancestry and station, which I have hitherto persisted in cherishing,—­how God, I repeat, in his displeasure has remembered mercy, and, in taking away that which is worthless, has left me that which is most precious, even you my bright one.”

The old lady then kissed Tamar, and gave her the permission she required, to arrange the cottage according to her own fancy.  When the day of removal actually arrived, being the day after the Laird had walked himself off, the neighbours, with Shanty at their head, came to assist.

Tamar had determined upon having the room within the kitchen, for her beloved father by adoption; a village artist having understood her pious wish, had stained the walls of light grey, and painted the frame of the casement window of the same colour.  Tamar had prepared a curtain of some light drapery for the window; a well-darned carpet covered the floor, the Laird’s bookcases occupied one entire end of the room opposite the window, the wonted table of the old study at the Tower was placed in the centre of the floor, and was covered with its usual cloth, a somewhat tarnished baize, with a border worked in crewels by Mrs. Margaret in days gone by.  In the centre of this table the inkstand was placed, and on the opposite wall, a venerable time-piece, asserted, with what truth we presume not to say, to be nearly as old as the clock sent by Haroun Al Raschid to the emperor Charlemagne.  A few high-backed chairs, certain strange chimney ornaments, and other little matters dear to the Laird, finished the furniture of this room, and Tamar perfectly laughed with joy, when, having seen all done, she became aware that this small apartment was in fact more comfortable than the cold, wide, many-drafted study in the Tower.