Miss Maxwell and the Crichtons had failed to make either Jane or Elsie take any interest in a theological dispute on a point of doctrine between some neighbouring ministers which was agitating all Swinton at the time; and when at last Jane was forced to give an opinion on one side or the other, she gave it quite on the contrary side from the right one, so that they were sure the girls were quite as bad as their uncle.  Both girls had been educated to express themselves very clearly and decidedly; whereas, as Emilia Chalmers says, whenever a young lady gives an opinion it should always be delivered Sotto Voce, that is, under the powers of the performer’s voice, to borrow an image from her musical vocabulary.  Even if she does know a thing very well, she should keep her knowledge in the background; there is a graceful timidity that is far more attractive than such unladylike confidence.

“Depend upon it, gentlemen do not like it,” Miss Jardine would say.  “If Jane Melville were not an heiress, do you think William Dalzell would submit to her airs?  I know him better than that.”

But, yet, when the girls were shown to be no heiresses, every one was very sorry for them.  If a subscription had been got up to assist them in their difficulties, there was no one who would not have given something.  Even the Misses Crichton and Miss Maxwell would have subscribed as much as they did to the Foreign Missions, and that was no inconsiderable sum; and if Jane and Elsie had thrown themselves on the compassion of the neighbourhood, there were many who would have offered them a temporary home.  But they preserved their independent spirit even though they were not heiresses, and could not sue in forma PAUPERIS.  It was a subject of much conversation that the Misses Melville had preferred to go with Peggy Walker, the laundress, to some poor place in the old town of Edinburgh, to making any application for assistance to people of their own sphere.  What they could do under Peggy’s auspices was not likely to be of a very brilliant description.

It is not to be supposed that Peggy Walker was not as good a judge of orthodoxy as the Misses Crichton and Miss Maxwell, but she had not so great a horror of the family at Cross Hall as they had; she had been for several years out of her own parish and country, and had learned some toleration.  As she said, the old laird was a just man and a kind one, and until he made his will she had no fault to find with him; and as for the young ladies, they were just the cleverest and the tenderest-hearted to the poor of all the gentry in the country-side.  Many a tale of distress had Peggy told them, and had never failed to find the girls open their purses, or go to see the poor people.  They had a liberal allowance, and had no extravagant tastes in dress; but their charities had been so extensive that at the time of their uncle’s death, there was no great balance in either girl’s hands.  They knew that Peggy was no niggardly woman, but a most liberal one according to her means and her opportunities—­that she gave personal services out of a very busy life, and money, too, out of an income that had many claims on it.