of contradiction.
    There was something in all this so mysterious as considerably to alarm the
prudent and affectionate Jeanie, the more so as she judged it unkind to her
sister to mention to their father grounds of anxiety which might arise from her
own imagination. Besides, her respect for the good old man did not prevent her
from being aware that he was both hot-tempered and positive, and she sometimes
suspected that he carried his dislike to youthful amusements beyond the verge
that religion and reason demanded. Jeanie had sense enough to see that a sudden
and severe curb upon her sister's hitherto unrestrained freedom might be rather
productive of harm than good, and that Effie, in the headstrong wilfulness of
youth, was likely to make what might be overstrained in her father's precepts an
excuse to herself for neglecting them altogether. In the higher classes, a
damsel, however giddy, is still under the dominion of etiquette, and subject to
the surveillance of mammas and chaperons; but the country girl, who snatches her
moment of gaiety during the intervals of labour, is under no such guardianship
or restraint, and her amusement becomes so much the more hazardous. Jeanie saw
all this with much distress of mind, when a circumstance occurred which appeared
calculated to relieve her anxiety.
    Mrs. Saddletree, with whom our readers have already been made acquainted,
chanced to be a distant relation of Douce David Deans, and as she was a woman
orderly in her life and conversation, and, moreover, of good substance, a sort
of acquaintance was formally kept up between the families. Now, this careful
dame, about a year and a half before our story commences, chanced to need, in
the line of her profession, a better sort of servant, or rather shop-woman. »Mr.
Saddletree,« she said, »was never in the shop when he could get his nose within
the Parliament House, and it was an awkward thing for a woman-body to be
standing among bundles o' barkened leather her lane, selling saddles and
bridles; and she had cast her eyes upon her far-awa cousin Effie Deans, as just
the very sort of lassie she would want to keep her in countenance on such
occasions.«
    In this proposal there was much that pleased old David, - there was bed,
board, and bountith - it was a decent situation - the lassie would be under Mrs.
Saddletree's eye, who had an upright walk, and lived close by the Tolbooth Kirk,
in which might still be heard the comforting doctrines of one of those few
ministers of