Thanks to the unforgetting sister of this dear child, who has much of the sensibility and fun of her who has been in her small grave these fifty and more years, we have now before us the letters and journals of Pet Marjorie,—­before us lies and gleams her rich brown hair, bright and sunny as if yesterday’s, with the words on the paper, “Cut out in her last illness,” and two pictures of her by her beloved Isabella, whom she worshiped; there are the faded old scraps of paper, hoarded still, over which her warm breath and her warm little heart had poured themselves; there is the old water-mark, “Lingard, 1808.”  The two portraits are very like each other, but plainly done at different times; it is a chubby, healthy face, deep-set, brooding eyes, as eager to tell what is going on within as to gather in all the glories from without; quick with the wonder and the pride of life; they are eyes that would not be soon satisfied with seeing; eyes that would devour their object, and yet childlike and fearless.  And that is a mouth that will not be soon satisfied with love; it has a curious likeness to Scott’s own, which has always appeared to us his sweetest, most mobile and speaking feature.

There she is, looking straight at us as she did at him,—­fearless and full of love, passionate, wild, willful, fancy’s child.

* * * * *

There was an old servant, Jeanie Robertson, who was forty years in her grandfather’s family.  Marjorie Fleming—­or as she is called in the letters and by Sir Walter, Maidie—­was the last child she kept.  Jeanie’s wages never exceeded L3 a year, and when she left service she had saved L40.  She was devotedly attached to Maidie, rather despising and ill-using her sister Isabella, a beautiful and gentle child.  This partiality made Maidie apt at times to domineer over Isabella.  “I mention this,” writes her surviving sister, “for the purpose of telling you an instance of Maidie’s generous justice.  When only five years old, when walking in Raith grounds, the two children had run on before, and old Jeanie remembered they might come too near a dangerous mill-lade.  She called to them to turn back.  Maidie heeded her not, rushed all the faster on, and fell, and would have been lost, had her sister not pulled her back, saving her life, but tearing her clothes.  Jeanie flew on Isabella to ‘give it her’ for spoiling her favorite’s dress; Maidie rushed in between, crying out, ’Pay (whip) Maidie as much as you like, and I’ll not say one word; but touch Isy, and I’ll roar like a bull!’ Years after Maidie was resting in her grave, my mother used to take me to the place, and told the story always in the exact same words.”  This Jeanie must have been a character.  She took great pride in exhibiting Maidie’s brother William’s Calvinistic acquirements when nineteen months old, to the officers of a militia regiment then quartered in Kirkcaldy.  This performance was so amusing that it was often repeated, and the little theologian