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204 awkward fellow, no more like George than a cart-horse is like a racer. But you must hear what Jessie herself says. People cannot always be equal in means when God has fitted them otherwise for each other."

Although Hugh Lindsay was vexed and annoyed at the affair, he was a just and upright man; and when Jessie told him how strong her attachment was, and that she never could marry the man of her father's choice, or anybody but George, he felt that she must not be thwarted. Old memories of a courtship among the braes of bonnie Teviotdale, where there was far less chance of worldly prosperity for the pair of lovers than now opened for George and Jessie, came over him. Jessie had never looked so like her mother as when she declared the state of her heart. George's account of the circumstances of his family in England carried some weight. A Scotchman always appreciates the fact of having come of respectable people, and the letters George showed bore strong evidence of that.

So that when Hugh Lindsay broke the news to his wife he was disposed to soften matters, and to be a little impatient with her for making the very objections he had offered, and which had been overruled.

The parents loved and respected their