“I should like to leave on Wednesday, for my cousin comes to take possession on that day, and Elsie cannot bear any one to see us bidding farewell to our dear old home.”

“I cannot just flit before Thursday.”

“Well, I suppose we must stay to welcome the new owner; I have no objection to doing so.”

“It may be painful to your feelings, Miss Melville, but yet I think it would be but right.  There are things you may mention to the new man that would do good to them that are left behind you.  That poor blind widow, Jeanie Weir, that you send her dinner to every day, would miss her dole if it was not kept up; and I know there are more than her that you want to speak a good word for.  I hear no ill of this Maister Francis; and though we all grudge him the kingdom he has come into, it may be that he will rule it worthily.”

Chapter VI.

A Bundle Of Old Letters

Elsie had a headache when Francis came to take possession of his new home, and scarcely made her appearance; but Jane, who felt none of her sister’s shrinking from him, showed him over the house, and told him how it had been managed, hoped he would keep the present servants, and particularly recommended to his care the gardener, who, though rather superannuated and rheumatic, had been forty years in the service of the family, and understood the soil and the treatment of it very well.

He was not only glad to hear what she said, but was resolved to be guided by it, and took a memorandum of her poor pensioners, that they, at least, should not suffer by Mr. Hogarth’s will.

Then she walked with him over the grounds, and pointed out what improvements her uncle had made, and what more he had contemplated making.  She was rather deficient in taste for rural beauty.  She loved Cross Hall because it was her home, and because she had been happy there, rather than because she fully appreciated the loveliness of the situation and the prospect.  Her cousin, townsman as he was, had far more natural taste.  It was romantically situated, and the grounds were beautifully laid out; there were pretty hamlets in the distance, gentlemen’s country seats embowered in trees, green cornfields, merry brooks, and winding valleys.  Francis’ eyes and heart were filled with the exceeding beauty of the landscape.

“You must be very sorry to leave all this Jane,” he said.

“I believe that is the least of my troubles.  I am more sorry to leave these;” and she led him to the stables, and showed him the two beautiful horses she and her sister had been accustomed to ride.  “You will be kind to them for our sakes, and the dogs, too.  I am—­we are both—­very concerned to part with the dogs.”

“Should you not like to take any of them with you?” said Francis, eagerly.

“No, no; dogs such as these would be a nuisance in a crowded little room in Edinburgh, and I do not think they would like such a life, for their own part.  You will take better care of them than we could possibly do.  But I forget:  you have, perhaps, as little affection for animals as I have taste for scenery.”