On this bright October morning Miss Gertrude White was about to begin her domestic inquiries, and was leaving her room humming cheerfully to herself something about the bonnie Glenogie of the song, when she was again stopped by her sister, who was carrying a bundle.

“I have got the skins,” she said, gloomily.  “Jane took them out.”

“Will you look at them?” the sister said, kindly.  “They are very pretty.  If they were not a present, I would give them to you, to make a jacket of them.”

“I wear them?” said she.  “Not likely!”

Nevertheless she had sufficient womanly curiosity to let her elder sister open the parcel; and then she took up the otter-skins one by one, and looked at them.

“I don’t think much of them,” she said.

The other bore this taunt patiently.

“They are only big moles, aren’t they?  And I thought moleskin was only worn by working-people.”

“I am a working-person too,” Miss Gertrude White said:  “but, in any case, I think a jacket of these skins will look lovely.”

“Oh, do you think so?  Well, you can’t say much for the smell of them.”

“It is no more disagreeable than the smell of a sealskin jacket.”

She laid down the last of the skins with some air of disdain.

“It will be a nice series of trophies, anyway—­showing you know some one who goes about spending his life in killing inoffensive animals.”

“Poor Sir Keith Macleod!  What has he done to offend you, Carry?”

Miss Carry turned her head away for a minute; but presently she boldly faced her sister.

“Gerty, you don’t mean to marry a beauty man!”

Gerty looked considerably puzzled; but her companion continued, vehemently,—­

“How often have I heard you say you would never marry a beauty man—­a man who has been brought up in front of the looking-glass—­who is far too well satisfied with his own good looks to think of anything or anybody else!  Again and again you have said that, Gertrude White.  You told me, rather than marry a self-satisfied coxcomb, you would marry a misshapen, ugly little man, so that he would worship you all the days of your life for your condescension and kindness.”

“Very well, then!”

“And what is Sir Keith Macleod but a beauty man?”

“He is not!” and for once the elder sister betrayed some feeling in the proud tone of her voice.  “He is the manliest-looking man that I have ever seen; and I have seen a good many more men than you.  There is not a man you know whom he could not throw across the canal down there.  Sir Keith Macleod a beauty man!—­I think he could take on a good deal more polishing, and curling, and smoothing without any great harm.  If I was in any danger, I know which of all the men I have seen I would rather have in front of me—­with his arms free; and I don’t suppose he would be thinking of any looking-glass!  If you want to know about the race he represents, read English history, and the story of England’s wars.  If you go to India, or China, or Africa, or the Crimea, you will hear something about the Macleods, I think!”