The most hospitable¹ and polite of Colonels would not hear of Mrs. Mackenzie and her daughter quitting his house when he returned to it, after six weeks’ pleasant sojourn² in Paris; nor, indeed, did his fair guest show the least anxiety or intention to go away. Mrs. Mackenzie had a fine merry humour of her own. She was an old soldier’s wife, she said and knew when her quarters were good; and I suppose, since her honeymoon³, when the captain took her to Harrogate and Cheltenham, stopping at the first hotels, and travelling in a chaise-and-pair the whole way, she had never been so well off as in that roomy mansion⁴ near Tottenham Court Road. Of her mother’s house at Musselburgh she gave a ludicrous but dismal⁵ account. “Eh, James,” she said, “I think if you had come to mamma, as you threatened, you would not have staid very long. It’s a wearisome place. Dr. M’Craw boards with her; and it’s sermon and psalm-singing from morning till night. My little Josey takes kindly⁶ to the life there, and I left her behind, poor little darling! It was not fair to bring three of us to take possession of your house, dear James; but my poor little Rosey was just withering⁷ away there. It’s good for the dear child to see the world a little, and a kind uncle, who is not afraid of us now he sees us, is he?” Kind Uncle James was not at all afraid of little Rosey; whose pretty face and modest manners, and sweet songs, and blue eyes, cheered and soothed⁸ the old bachelor. Nor was Rosey’s mother less agreeable and pleasant. She had married the captain (it was a love-match, against the will of her parents, who had destined¹⁰ her to be the third wife of old Dr. M’Mull) when very young. Many sorrows she had had, including poverty, the captain’s

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