Palestrina and I should be in the drawing-room at the moment when they should enter. The presence of strangers, it was thought, would make it easier for James at the meeting where all were kinsfolk except himself. With their usual consideration The Family decided that the rest of their large number should afterwards drop in casually, two by two, and be introduced to the new brother-in-law without ceremony. Mrs. Jamieson, who had not left the house that day, nor for many days previously, having been absorbed in preparations for the expected guest, was dressed in a bonnet and her favourite jacket with the storm-collar, which, as she explained to my sister, took away from the roundness of her face and gave her confidence. 

 Her habitual shyness, added to her fears of the unknown in the shape of the future son-in-law, had wrought her into a sort of rigid state in which conversation seemed impossible, and although we did our best to divert her attention I am doubtful if she heard a word we said. 

 "They should be here soon," I remarked presently. 

 Mrs. Jamieson, following some line of thought of her own, remarked that the first marriage in a family was almost like a death; and to this mournful analogy I gave assent. 

 "Kate says he is quite a gentleman," hazarded Mrs. Jamieson, still rigid, and now white with anxiety and shyness. 

 I found myself replying, without overdone brilliance, that that seemed a good thing. 

 The sands of Mrs. Jamieson's courage were running very low.  "I hope he is not one of your grandees," she said apprehensively; "I would not like to think of Kate not being up to him. But their father was a gentleman—the most perfect gentleman I ever knew, and I have always that to think of. Still, a gentlemanly man is all I want for any of my girls, with no difference between the two families." 

 Sometimes in this way Mrs. Jamieson gives one an unexpected insight into the difficulties of her life, and one feels that even her admiration for her daughters may be tinged with a slight feeling of being their inferior. I have heard her say, making use of a French expression such as she hazards so courageously, that there is something of the "grawn dam about Maud;" and perhaps the loyal admiration thus expressed may have been mingled with another sensation not so pleasurable to the farmer's daughter. 

 I endeavoured to follow the intricacies of her train of thought, but the station omnibus had 

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