me," said Marget; "I think no man perfection. Are ye comin' to see aboot the denner the noo, or wull I begin to ma front-door?"
"Give me three minutes, Marget, to see the boys off."
Two small boys with school-bags on their backs came up the gravelled path. "Here comes Thomas—and Billy following after. Buff! Buff!—where is the boy?"
"Here," said Buff, emerging suddenly from his father's study. "Where's my bag?"
He paid no attention to his small companion and Thomas and Billy made no sign of recognition to him.
"Are you boys not going to say good morning?" asked Elizabeth, as she put on Buff's school-bag. "Don't you know that when gentlefolk meet courtesies are exchanged?"
The three boys looked at each other and murmured a greeting in a shame-faced way.
"Can you say your lessons to-day, Thomas?" Elizabeth asked, buttoning the while Buff's overcoat.
"No," said Thomas, "but Billy can say his."
"This is singing-day," said Billy brightly.
Billy was round and fat and beaming. Thomas was fat too, but inclined to be pensive. Buff was thin and seemed all one colour—eyes, hair, and complexion. Thomas and Billy were pretty children: Buff was plain.
"Uch!" said Thomas.
"I thought you liked singing-day," said Elizabeth.
"We did," said Buff, "but last day they asked me and Thomas to stop singing cos we were putting the others off the tune."
"Oh!" said Elizabeth, trying not to smile. "Well, it's time you were off. Here's your Edinburgh rock." She gave each of them half a stick of rock, which they stuck in their mouths cigar-wise.
"Be sure and come straight home," said Elizabeth to Buff.
"You'd better not come to tea with us to-day, Buff," said Thomas. "Mamma said yesterday it was about time we had a rest."
"I wasn't coming," said the outraged Buff.
Elizabeth put an arm round him as she spoke to Thomas.
"Mamma has quite enough with her own, Thomas. I expect when Buff joins you you worry her dreadfully. I think you and Billy had better come to tea here to-day, and after you have finished your lessons we'll play at 'Yellow Dog Dingo.'"
"Hurray!" said Billy.
"And when we've finished 'Yellow Dog Dingo,'" said Buff, "will you play at 'Giantess'?"
"Well—for half an hour, perhaps," said Elizabeth. "Now run off, or I'll be Giantess this minute and eat you all up."
They moved towards the door; then Thomas stopped and observed dreamily:
"I dreamt last night that Satan and his wife and baby were chasing me."
"Oh, Thomas!" said Elizabeth. She watched the three little figures in their bunchy little overcoats, with their arms round each other's necks, stumble out of the gate, then she shut the front-door and went into her father's study.
Mr. Seton was standing in what, to him, was a very characteristic attitude. One foot was on a chair, his left hand was in his pocket, while in his right he held a smallish green volume. A delighted smile was on his face as Elizabeth entered.
"Aha, Father! Caught you that time."
Mr. Seton put the book back on the shelf.
"My dear girl, I was only glancing at something that——"
"Only a refreshing glance at Scott before you begin your sermon, Father dear, and 'what for no'? Oh! while I remember—the Sabbath-school social comes off on the ninth: you are to take the chair, and I'm to sing. I shall print it in big letters on this card and stick it on the mantelpiece, then we're bound to remember it."
Mr. Seton was already at his writing-table.
"Yes, yes," he said in an absent-minded way. "Run away now, like a good girl. I'm busy."
"Yes, I'm going. Just look at the snug way Buff has arranged the kitten. Father, Thomas has been having nightmares about Satan in his domestic relations. Did you know Satan had a wife and baby——?"
"Elizabeth!"
"I didn't say it; it was Thomas. That boy has an original mind."
"Well, well, girl; but you are keeping me back."
"Yes, I'm going. There's just one thing—about the chapter at prayers. I was wondering—only wondering, you know—if Baruch the son of Neriah had any real bearing on our everyday life?"
Mr. Seton looked at his daughter, then remarked as he turned back to his work: "I sometimes think you are a very ignorant creature, Elizabeth."
But Elizabeth only laughed as she shut the door and made her way kitchenwards.
On the kitchen stairs she met Ellen the housemaid, who stopped her with a "Please, Miss Elizabeth," while she fumbled in the pocket of her print and produced a post card with a photograph on it.
"It's ma brither," she explained. "I got it this mornin'."
Elizabeth carried the card to the window at the top of the staircase and studied it carefully.
"I think he's like you, Ellen," she said. "How beautifully his hair is brushed."
Ellen beamed. "He's got awful pretty prominent eyes," she said.
"Yes," said Elizabeth. "I expect you're very proud of him, Ellen. Is he your eldest brother?"
"Yes, mum. He's a butcher in the Co-operative and awful steady."
Elizabeth handed back the card.
"Thank you very much for letting me see it. How is your little sister's foot?"
"It's keepin' a lot better, and ma mother said I was to thank you for the toys and books you sent her."
"Oh, that's all right. I'm so glad she's better. When you're doing my room to-day remember the mirrors, will you? This weather makes them so dim."
"Yes, mum," said Ellen cheerfully, as she went to her day's work.
Elizabeth found Marget waiting for her. She had laid out on the kitchen-table all the broken meats from the pantry and was regarding the display gloomily. Marget had been twenty-five years with the Setons and was not so much a servant as a sort of Grand Vizier. She expected to be consulted on every point, and had the gravest fears about Buff's future because Elizabeth refused to punish him.
"It's no' kindness," she would say; "it's juist saftness. He should be wheepit."
She adored the memory of Elizabeth's mother, who had died five years before, when Buff was a little tiny boy. She adored too "the Maister," as she called Mr. Seton, though deprecating his other-worldly, absent-minded ways. "It wadna dae if we were a' like the Maister," she often
