Day followed day quietly, and Baubie had been just a week in the refuge, when Miss Mackenzie, faithful to her promise, called to inquire how her protegee was getting on.

The matron gave her rather a good character of Baubie.  “She’s just no trouble—­a quiet-like child.  She knows just nothing, but I’ve set her beside the lassie Grant, and I don’t doubt but she’ll do well yet; but she is some dull,” she added.

“Are you happy, Baubie?” asked Miss Mackenzie.  “Will you try and learn everything like ’Lisbeth Grant?  See how well she sews, and she is no older than you.”

“Ay, mem,” responded Baubie, meekly and without looking up.  She was still wearing ’Lisbeth Grant’s frock and apron, and the garments gave her that odd look of their real owner which clothes so often have the power of conveying.  Baubie’s slim figure had caught the flat-backed, square-shoulder form of her little neighbor, and her face, between the smooth-laid bands of her hair, seemed to have assumed the same gravely-respectable air.  The disingenuous roving eye was there all the time, could they but have noted it, and gave the lie to her compressed lips and studied pose.

That same day the Rob Roy tartan frock made its appearance from the wash, brighter as to hue, but somewhat smaller and shrunken in size, as was the nature of its material for one reason, and for another because it had parted, in common with its owner when subjected to the same process, with a great deal of extraneous matter.  Baubie saw her familiar garb again with joy, and put it on with keen satisfaction.

That same night, when the girls were going to bed—­whether the inspiration still lingered, in spite of soapsuds, about the red frock, and was by it imparted to its owner, or whether it was merely the prompting of that demon of self-assertion that had been tormenting her of late—­Baubie Wishart volunteered a song, and, heedless of consequences, struck up one of the two which formed her stock in trade.

The unfamiliar sounds had not long disturbed the quiet of the house when the matron and Kate, open-eyed with wonder, hastened up to know what was the meaning of this departure from the regular order of things.  Baubie heard their approach, and only sang the louder.  She had a good and by no means unmusical voice, which the rest had rather improved; and by the time the authorities arrived on the scene there was an audience gathered round the daring Baubie, who, with shoes and stockings off and the Rob Roy tartan half unfastened, was standing by her bed, singing at the pitch of her voice.  The words could be heard down the stairs: 

Hark!  I hear the bugles sounding:  ’tis the signal for the fight.  Now, may God protect us, mother, as He ever does the right.

“Baubie Wishart,” cried the astonished mistress, “what do you mean?”

The singer was just at the close of a verse: 

Hear the battle-cry of Freedom! how it swells upon the air! 
Yes, we’ll rally round the standard or we’ll perish nobly there.