“Be still, Mary Strathsay!” said my mother.  “Alice will wear white this summer; ’tis most suitable.  She has white slips and to spare.”

“But in the winter?” urged the other. “’Twill be sad for the child, and we all so bright.  There’s my pearl silk,—­I’m fairly tired of it,—­and with a cherry waist-piece”——­

“You lose breath,” said my mother, coldly and half vexed.

So Mary Strathsay bit her lip and kept the peace.

“Whisht now, child, your turn will come,” said Margray, unfolding a little bodice of purple velvet, with its droop of snowy Mechlin.  “One must cut the coat according to the cloth.  That’s for Effie,—­gayly my heart’s beat under you,” laying it down and patting it on one side, lovingly.  “There, if white’s the order of the day, white let it be,—­and let Mrs. Strathsay say her most, she cannot make other color of this, and she shall not say me nay.  That’s for Alice.”  And she flung all the silvery silk and blonde lace about me.

“Child, you’ll sparkle!” whispered Mary Strathsay in my ear, hastening to get the glittering apparel aside, lest my mother should gainsay us.

But Mrs. Strathsay did not throw us a glance.

“You’re ill-pleased, Effie,” said Margray; for our little beauty, finding herself so suddenly the pet, had learned to toss her head in pretty saucy ways.

“Not a speck!” Effie answered up. “’Twas high time,—­I was thinking.”

Margray laughed, and took her chin ’twixt thumb and finger, and tried to look under the wilful lids that drooped above the blue light in her eyes.

“You’re aye a faithful pet, and I like you clannish.  Stand by them that stands by you, my poor man used to say.  You shall put on as fine a gown, and finer, of my providing, the day you’re wedded.”

  “I’ll gie ye veil o’ siller lace,
    And troth ye wi’ a ring;
  Sae bid the blushes to your face,
    My ain wee thing!”

sang Mary.

“I want none of your silver lace,” said Effie, laughing lightly, and we little dreamed of the girl’s thought.  “I’ll have that web my mother has wrought with myrtle-leaf and blossom.”

“And ’twas begun for me,” said Mary, arching her brows, and before she thought.

“You,—­graceless girl!” said my mother.  “It’s no bridal veil will ever cross your curls!”

“Surely, mother, we’ve said too much,—­you’ll overlook old scores.”

“’T is hard forgetting, when a perverse child puts the hand to her own hurt.”

“No hurt to me.  You would not have had me take a man at his word when he recked not what he said.”

“Tsh!  Tsh!  Charles Seavern would have married you.  And with the two brothers gone, he’s an earl now,—­and you flung him off.  Tsh!”

“I never saw the time, mother, solemnly as I’ve told you, when his right hand knew what his left hand did,—­what with his champagne-suppers, your Burgundy, and Johnny Graeme’s Jamaica.  He’d have been sorely shocked to wake up sober in his earldom some fine morning and find a countess beside him ready-made to his hand.”