“Isn’t it strange to think of Miss Jean as an heiress?  Such a plain little thing—­in her clothes, I mean, for she has a bit sweet wee face.  I don’t know how she’ll ever do in a great big house with butlers and things.  I expect she’ll leave The Rigs now.  It’s no place for an heiress.  Perhaps she’ll build a house like The Towers.  No; you’re right:  she’ll look for an old house; she always had such queer ideas about liking old things and plain things....  Well, when she had a wee house it had a wide door.  I hope when she gets a big house it won’t have a narrow door.  Money sometimes changes people’s very natures....  It’s a funny business; you never really know what’ll happen to you in this world.  Anyway, I don’t grudge it to Miss Jean, though, mind you, I don’t think myself that she’ll carry off money well.  She hasn’t presence enough, if you know what I mean.  She’ll never look the thing in a big motor, and you can’t imagine her being haughty to people poorer than herself.  She has such a way of putting herself beside folk—­even a tinker-body on the road!”

Miss Bathgate heard the news with sardonic laughter.

“So that’s the latest!  Miss Jean’s gaun to be upsides wi’ the best o’ them!  Puir lamb, puir lamb!  I hope the siller ’ll bring her happiness, but I doot it ...  I yince kent some folk that got a fortune left them.  He was a beadle in the U.F.  Kirk at Kirkcaple, a dacent man wi’ a wife and dochter, an’ by some queer chance they came into a heap o’ siller, an’ a hoose—­a mansion hoose, ye ken.  They never did mair guid, puir bodies.  The hoose was that big that the only kinda cosy place they could see to sit in was the butler’s pantry, an’ they took to drink, fair for want o’ anything else to dae.  I’ve heard tell that they took whisky to their porridges, but that’s mebbe a lee.  Onyway, the faither and mither sune died off, and the dochter went to board wi’ the minister an’ his wife, to see if they could dae onything wi’ her.  I mind seein’ her yince.  She was sittin’ horn-idle, an’ I said to her, ‘D’ye niver tak’ up a stockin’?’ and she says, ‘I dinna need to dae naething.’  ‘But,’ I says, ‘a stockin’ keeps your hands busy, an’ keeps ye frae wearyin’,’ but she juist said, ’I tell ye I dinna need to dae naething.  I whiles taks a ride in a carriage.’ ...  It was a sorry sicht, I can tell ye, to see a dacent lass ruined wi’ siller....  Weel, Miss Jean ’ll get a man noo.  Nae fear o’ that,” and Miss Bathgate repeated her cynical lines about the lass “on Tintock tap.”

Mrs. Hope was much excited when she heard, more especially when she found who Jean’s benefactor was.