was presented by them with a cap and feathers.  Jeanie’s glory was “putting him through the carritch” (catechism) in broad Scotch, beginning at the beginning with “Wha made ye, ma bonnie man?” For the correctness of this and the three next replies, Jeanie had no anxiety; but the tone changed to menace, and the closed nieve (fist) was shaken in the child’s face as she demanded, “Of what are you made?” “DIRT,” was the answer uniformly given.  “Wull ye never learn to say dust, ye thrawn deevil?” with a cuff from the opened hand, was the as inevitable rejoinder.

Here is Maidie’s first letter, before she was six, the spelling unaltered, and there are no “commoes.”

“MY DEAR ISA—­I now sit down to answer all your kind and beloved letters which you was so good as to write to me.  This is the first time I ever wrote a letter in my Life.  There are a great many Girls in the Square and they cry just like a pig when we are under the painfull necessity of putting it to Death.  Miss Potune a Lady of my acquaintance praises me dreadfully.  I repeated something out of Dean Swift and she said I was fit for the stage and you may think I was primmed up with majestick Pride but upon my word I felt myselfe turn a little birsay—­birsay is a word which is a word that William composed which is as you may suppose a little enraged.  This horrid fat simpliton says that my Aunt is beautifull which is intirely impossible for that is not her nature.”

What a peppery little pen we wield!  What could that have been out of the sardonic Dean? what other child of that age would have used “beloved” as she does?  This power of affection, this faculty of beloving, and wild hunger to be beloved, comes out more and more.  She periled her all upon it, and it may have been as well—­we know, indeed, that it was far better—­for her that this wealth of love was so soon withdrawn to its one only infinite Giver and Receiver.  This must have been the law of her earthly life.  Love was indeed “her Lord and King”; and it was perhaps well for her that she found so soon that her and our only Lord and King Himself is Love.  Here are bits from her Diary at Braehead:—­

“The day of my existence here has been delightful and enchanting.  On Saturday I expected no less than three well-made Bucks the names of whom is here advertised.  Mr. Geo. Crakey [Craigie], and Wm. Keith and Jn.  Keith—­the first is the funniest of every one of them.  Mr. Crakey and I walked to Crakyhall [Craigiehall] hand in hand in Innocence and matitation [meditation] sweet thinking on the kind love which flows in our tender hearted mind which is overflowing with majestic pleasure no one was ever so polite to me in the hole state of my existence.  Mr. Craky you must-know is a great Buck and pretty good-looking.”

“I am at Ravelston enjoying nature’s fresh air.  The birds are singing sweetly—­the calf doth frisk and nature shows her glorious face.”