"O mamma," said Bertha, looking up wistfully into her face, "how I should love to play so with water and pebbles, and little boats, and ducks and geese, and dams, all day long! How happy they must be!"
"Perhaps little Lilly thinks it would be a very happy thing to be in your place, my daughter," said Lady Blantyre.
"Do you think so?" asked Bertha, wonderingly.
"Ay," answered Lilly, in a low, almost awestruck tone, "I think that to be Miss Bertha, and bide in a braw (fine) Castle, wad be next to being an angel, or a bonnie fairy princess."
All laughed at this, but on the way home Bertha was very thoughtful and sad. Every time she spoke, it was to bewail her hard lot in being allowed to take the air only in walks with her governess, or drives with her mamma, in being obliged to wear fine clothes, to learn music and dancing, "and other tiresome things," and never being free to run wild on the hills and heaths, wade in the ponds, and plash in the burns, like the little MacWillies.
Her mother tried to show her that, as her station was different from theirs, her education and habits should be different, and that she had a great deal to be thankful for, and might be very happy, if she would.
"Well, I think I ought at least to have a little brother to play with me. I think God might have given me that, and kept back some of the other things."
At this little burst of petulance, Lady Blantyre sighed and was silent for some moments. Then she said: "Would my little daughter like to try living at the cottage of the MacWillies for a day or two, just like one of their own?"
"O yes, mamma, and play with Lilly and Hughie?"
"With Hughie and the other children. I must have Lilly with me at the Castle, to make up for the loss of my little Bertha."