AFTER SEVEN YEARS.
"There wild woods grow, and rivers flow,
And mony a hill between;
But day and night my fancy's flight
Is ever wi' my Jean."
R. BURNS.
[CHAPTER I.]
MRS. KENNEDY'S NOTIONS.
"How we talk in the little town below!"
"PIPPA PASSES": R. BROWNING.
"A REGULAR niminy-piminy-molly-coddle! That's what he'll be, my dear."
"But don't you think—by-and-by—when he gets out into the world—?"
"No, I don't. Miss Devereux will have done the business by then. I wouldn't say so much to most people, Mabel: but it's just the old story over again—the hen with one chick, you know. And an old maid hen is the worst of all, don't you see?"
"Only he's such a nice boy!" regretfully.
"He's lovely!" said Mrs. Kennedy. "A real out-and-out gentleman, and the prettiest manners! Too pretty by half for a boy of seventeen! Why, he ought to be a hobbledehoy, and there isn't a scrap of hobbledehoyism about him. It isn't natural. It's like a tadpole growing into a frog, without dropping its tail, you know. And it's ruination to any boy to be treated as if he was a spoonful of salt, ready to melt. That's what she does, don't you see?"