“There are so many wonderful things,” said Alice, “that one gets always lost among them.  How the clouds float is wonderful, and that with the same earth below and the same heaven above, the heather should be purple, and the corn yellow, and the ferns green, is wonderful; but not so wonderful, I think, as that a man by the touch of genius should have made every one interested in a field-laborer taking a thorn out of the hand of another field-laborer.  Catch your poet, and he’ll soon make the machine interesting.”

“Get a thorn into your finger, Alice,” said George Eildon, “and I’ll take it out if it is so interesting.”

“You could not make it interesting,” said she.

“Just try,” he said.

“But trying won’t do.  You know as well as I that there are things no trying will ever do.  I am trying to paint, for instance, and in time I shall copy pretty well, but I shall never do more.”

“Hush, hush!” said Miss Adamson.  “I’m often enough in despair myself, and hearing you say that makes me worse.  I rebel at having got just so much brain and no more; but I suppose,” she said with a sigh, “if we make the best of what we have, it’s all right, and if we had well-balanced minds we should be contented.”

“Would you like to stay here longer among the hills and the sheep?” said Lady Arthur.  “I have just remembered that I want silks for my embroidery, and I have time to go to town:  I can catch the afternoon train.  Do any of you care to go?”

“It is good to be here,” said Mr. Eildon, “but as we can’t stay always, we may as well go now.  I suppose.”

And John, accustomed to sudden orders, hurried off to get his horses put to the carriage.

Lady Arthur, upon the whole, approved of railways, but did not use them much except upon occasion; and it was only by taking the train she could reach town and be home for dinner on this day.

They reached the station in time, and no more.  Mr. Eildon ran and got tickets, and John was ordered to be at the station nearest Garscube Hall to meet them when they returned.

Embroidery, being an art which high-born dames have practiced from the earliest ages, was an employment that had always found favor in the sight of Lady Arthur, and to which she turned when she wanted change of occupation.  She took a very short time to select her materials, and they were back and seated in the railway carriage fully ten minutes before the train started.  They beguiled the time by looking about the station:  it was rather a different scene from that where they had been in the fore part of the day.

“There’s surely a mistake,” said Mr. Eildon, pointing to a large picture hanging on the wall of three sewing-machines worked by three ladies, the one in the middle being Queen Elizabeth in her ruff, the one on the right Queen Victoria in her widow’s cap:  the princess of Wales was very busy at the third.  “Is not that what is called an anachronism, Miss Adamson?  Are not sewing-machines a recent invention?  There were none in Elizabeth’s time, I think?”