in the short winter days, and oh! how they missed their mother! It was like losing her again, to come home to the great empty house, which their father left almost before the sun rose for weeks together, not to return again till the lamps had been lighted for hours in the wide hall.

And Geordie! When they had been at Saughleas a month or more, their father had never spoken his name, and when Jean, the eldest and bravest of the sisters, putting great force upon herself, asked him when her brother was coming home, he answered so coldly, and with words so hard and bitter, that her heart sank as she heard. They had known for some time that something had gone wrong between them. Geordie had told them that, when he had gone to see them in London; but the sad story of poor Elsie Calderwood they had never heard. They mourned for their brother, and longed for his coming home, thinking that the happy days that were gone would come again with him.

Though the estate of Saughleas was small, the house was both large and stately. The last owner had put into the house, the money which should have been given to enrich the land, and make a beginning of the prosperity of the family which he had hoped to found. So it was like a castle almost, but it was little like a home.

The two or three great landed proprietors in the countryside were great people in their own esteem, and in the general esteem also; and George Dawson, notwithstanding Saughleas, was just the merchant and banker of the High-street to them—a man much respected in his own place, and he was not out of place on occasion, at the table of any of them all. But an interchange of civilities on equal terms between the ladies of the families was not likely to take place, nor was this greatly to be desired. It might have been different if their mother had lived, they said to one another; for in their remembrance of her, she was superior in every way to any lady of them all. But they were quite content with the society of Portie, and would have been content with the house in the High-street as well.

Mr Dawson asked his sister to come and live in his house when his daughters came home, but she declined to do so. They did not need her as mistress of the house, and she believed that her influence over them would be more decided and salutary should she remain in her own house. They were good bairns, she said, who meant to do right, and though they might whiles need a word of advice, or a restraining touch, it must be their own guidance that their father must lippen to, and not hers. And Auntie Jean was right.

They were good bairns on the whole, as their aunt said, and they were “bonnie lassies” as well. The first idea that most people had on seeing them, was that in person, mind, and manners, they were very much alike. Even their father thought this at first. But it was not long before he discovered that in most respects they were very different May, the youngest, was like her mother, “though nothing like so bonny,” he told himself with a sigh. Jean was like her aunt, it was said, but Auntie Jean herself, and the two or three others who remembered Auntie Jean’s mother as she was before her husband’s ship went down, said that the elder sister was like her grandmother, who had been a far bonnier woman than ever her daughter had been.

In form and features there was a resemblance between the sisters; May was the fairer and slighter of the two, and was often called the prettier. But as time went on the resemblance did not increase. Jean was the strongest in person and in mind, and the better able of the two to profit by the discipline, which time and circumstances brought to them both, and of this difference in character her face gave token to those who had eyes to see.

They loved each other, and were patient and forbearing with each other when they did not quite agree as to the course which either wished to pursue. But when it came about that one must yield her will to the other, it was May who was made to yield when her will would have led her into wrong or doubtful paths. But if pleasure were to be given up, or a distasteful duty done, or if some painful self-denial had to be borne by one so that the other might escape, such things generally fell to the lot of Jean.