Do we make too much of this little child, who has been in her grave in Abbotshall Kirkyard these fifty and more years?  We may of her cleverness,—­not of her affectionateness, her nature.  What a picture the animosa infans gives us of herself,—­her vivacity, her passionateness, her precocious love-making, her passion for nature, for swine, for all living things, her reading, her turn for expression, her satire, her frankness, her little sins and rages, her great repentances!  We don’t wonder Walter Scott carried her off in the neuk of his plaid, and played himself with her for hours.

The year before she died, when in Edinburgh, she was at a Twelfth Night Supper at Scott’s, in Castle Street.  The company had all come,—­all but Marjorie.  Scott’s familiars, whom we all know, were there,—­all were come but Marjorie; and all were dull because Scott was dull.  “Where’s that bairn? what can have come over her?  I’ll go myself and see.”  And he was getting up, and would have gone; when the bell rang, and in came Duncan Roy and his henchman Tougald, with the sedan chair, which was brought right into the lobby, and its top raised.  And there, in its darkness and dingy old cloth, sat Maidie in white, her eyes gleaming, and Scott bending over her in ecstasy,—­“hung over her enamored.”  “Sit ye there, my dautie, till they all see you”; and forthwith he brought them all.  You can fancy the scene.  And he lifted her up and marched to his seat with her on his stout shoulder, and set her down beside him; and then began the night, and such a night!  Those who knew Scott best said, that night was never equalled; Maidie and he were the stars; and she gave them Constance’s speeches and “Helvellyn,” the ballad then much in vogue, and all her repertoire,—­Scott showing her off, and being ofttimes rebuked by her for his intentional blunders.

We are indebted for the following to her sister:  “Her birth was 15th January, 1803; her death, 19th December, 1811.  I take this from her Bibles.[3] I believe she was a child of robust health, of much vigor of body, and beautifully formed arms, and, until her last illness, never was an hour in bed.

[Footnote 3:  “Her Bible is before me; a pair, as then called; the faded marks are just as she placed them.  There is one at David’s lament over Jonathan.”]

“I have to ask you to forgive my anxiety in gathering up the fragments of Marjorie’s last days, but I have an almost sacred feeling to all that pertains to her.  You are quite correct in stating that measles were the cause of her death.  My mother was struck by the patient quietness manifested by Marjorie during this illness, unlike her ardent, impulsive nature; but love and poetic feeling were unquenched.  When Dr. Johnstone rewarded her submissiveness with a sixpence, the request speedily followed that she might get out ere New Year’s day came.  When asked why she was so desirous of getting out, she immediately rejoined, ’O, I am so anxious