At last the old woman's growing resentment jarred her into speech. Dignity forbade a direct attack, and instead she said, with an added bitterness from repression:

"You're sitting in your father's chair, Mary."

There was no answer.

"That chair you're sitting in is your father's chair, do you hear?"

Still no answer came; and, trembling now with suppressed rage, the crone shouted:

"Are you deaf and dumb as well as stupid, you careless hussy? What made you forget your messages this afternoon ? Every day this week you've done something foolish. Has the heat turned your head ?"

Like a sleeper suddenly aroused, Mary looked up, recollected herself and smiled, so that the sun fell upon the sad still pool of her beauty.

"Were you speaking, Grandma?" she said.

"No!" cried the old woman coarsely. "I wasna speakin'. I was just openin' my mouth to catch flies. It's a graund way o' passin' the time if ye've nothing to do. I think ye must have been tryin' it when ye walked doun the toun this afternoon, but if ye shut your mouth and opened your een ye might mind things better."

At that moment Margaret Brodie entered from the scullery, carrying a large Britannia metal teapot and walking quickly with a kind of shuffling gait, taking short flurried steps with her body inclined forward, so that, as this was indeed her habitual carriage, she appeared always to be in a hurry and fearful of being late. She had discarded the wrapper in which she did the housework of the day

for a black satin blouse and skirt, but there were stains on the skirt and a loose tape hung untidily from her waist, whilst her hair straggled untidily about her face. Her head she carried perpetually to one side. Years before, this inclination had been affected to exhibit resignation and true Christian submission in periods of trial or tribulation, but time and the continual need for the expression of abnegation had rendered it permanent. Her nose seemed to follow this deviation from the vertical, sympathetically perhaps, but more probably as the result of a nervous tic she had developed in recent years of