"And do you not think I too have such a longing?"
"I suppose you have; but you have a wife and bairns. You can scarcely miss the old friends as I do."
"You must take a wife too, Jamie."
"If I could find a lass as good and as bonny as my cousin Annie, I might try to win her hand."
"Cousin Annie—ay, she was but young when I left the old country; but I mind she was fair to look at, and a pleasant child too. I wonder how they all look there now."
Jamie was not very long in finding a lass who would have compared not unfavorably with his cousin Annie. She was a cousin of Robin's wife, and the beautiful affection cherished for each other by these two families of cousins could scarcely have been equalled by any two brothers in the land. The grass was not suffered to grow upon the path between their pleasant homes. They loved to meet and talk of their old homes across the waters—of their dead as well as of their living friends. Robin could well remember his grandfather, honest Wullie, but Jamie could recall him only in his last days. He remembered how Alice Lindsay had tried to comfort his brother Wullie and himself when they first knew they were to lose their grandfather. Often, when thinking and talking of such things, they formed plans to go and see their relatives and the dear familiar scenes so far away. The prospect was still in the distance; but when they should become sufficiently prosperous they expected to make the journey.