When Lady Blantyre returned from the cottage, she found Bertha in the nursery, sitting on the lap of her kind nurse Margery.
"Well, has my little daughter learned content from this day's experience?" said the lady, smiling.
"Yes, mamma," replied Bertha. "I find that one must belong to the MacWillies, to do as they do, and like it; but somehow, I wish I had been used to their ways from the first, that is, if you and papa had been so too. It seems to me that God meant that all people should live nearly alike, and only have houses just big enough to hold them comfortably, like the nests of the birds; and that all children should run among the hills, and play with the brooks. Did n't he?"
"Perhaps he did, my child."
As for Lilly, she spoke her mind that night, to her pet kitten, as she hugged it in her arms before dropping to sleep. "Are ye na glad that we are na fine ladies, eh, Winkie?"
A CHARADE.
My first is fair, as when it graced
The bowers of Paradise;
It glows in Cashmere's vale, and climbs
Where snowy Alp-peaks rise:
It glads the peasant-woman's heart,
And the Queen's imperial eyes.
My second is a sacred name,
A name of high renown,
By poets sung, yet common 'tis,
As daisies on the down,
Though ladies grand and royal dames
Have worn it as a crown.
When William's ship rocked in the bay,
Impatient to be gone,
And William took his seaward way
Across our dewy lawn,
To pluck my whole to give her love,
Rose Mary with the dawn.
Rose-mary.