She looked at her with a sly air, in which there was something like irony, as she chanted, in a low but marked tone, a scrap of an old Scotch song-- "Through the kirkyard I met wi' the Laird, The silly puir body he said me nae harm; But just ere 'twas dark, I met wi' the clerk" Here the songstress stopped, looked full at her sister, and, observing the tears gather in her eyes, she suddenly flung her arms round her neck, and kissed them away.

Jeanie, though hurt and displeased, was unable to resist the caresses of this untaught child of nature, whose good and evil seemed to flow rather from impulse than from reflection.

But as she returned the sisterly kiss, in token of perfect reconciliation, she could not suppress the gentle reproof--"Effie, if ye will learn fule sangs, ye might make a kinder use of them." "And so I might, Jeanie," continued the girl, clinging to her sister's neck; "and I wish I had never learned ane o' them--and I wish we had never come here--and I wish my tongue had been blistered or I had vexed ye." "Never mind that, Effie," replied the affectionate sister; "I canna be muckle vexed wi' ony thing ye say to me--but O, dinna vex our father!" "I will not--I will not," replied Effie; "and if there were as mony dances the morn's night as there are merry dancers in the north firmament on a frosty e'en, I winna budge an inch to gang near ane o' them." "Dance!" echoed Jeanie Deans in astonishment.

"O Effie, what could take ye to a dance ?" It is very possible, that, in the communicative mood into which the Lily of St.Leonard's was now surprised, she might have given her sister her unreserved confidence, and saved me the pain of telling a melancholy tale; but at the moment the word dance was uttered, it reached the ear of old David Deans, who had turned the corner of the house, and came upon his daughters ere they were aware of his presence.

The word _prelate,_ or even the word _pope,_ could hardly have produced so appalling an effect upon David's ear; for, of all exercises, that of dancing, which he termed a voluntary and regular fit of distraction, he deemed most destructive of serious thoughts, and the readiest inlet to all sorts of licentiousness; and he accounted the encouraging, and even permitting, assemblies or meetings, whether among those of high or low degree, for this fantastic and absurd purpose, or for that of dramatic representations, as one of the most flagrant proofs of defection and causes of wrath.