The boys hooted at me, but I didn't mind them, and you and Father meekly stotted about, until Father one afternoon fell over a stool and spilt all his tea, whereupon he flew into one of his sudden rages, vowed that this nonsense must cease, and pulled up the blinds to the very top." Mrs. Douglas laughed softly. "Poor Ann, we didn't appreciate your artist friends much, but----" "Oh, but Mother," Ann interrupted, "Margot wasn't a real artist--not like Kathleen and Jim Strang, or any of the serious artists. She was only a woman with a certain amount of money and a small talent, good looks, and a vast amount of conceit. Even my foolish young eyes saw that very soon." "She put me very much about," Mrs. Douglas said; "she had such a wailing, affected way of talking. I never could think of anything to say in reply. Besides, I knew all the time she was thinking me an ignorant, frumpish woman, and that didn't inspire me. You admired her so much that you even copied her voice...." Ann began to laugh. "It must have been terrible, Mother. I remember Davie meeting Margot on the stairs, and she knelt down and began to talk to him in that wailing, affected voice. Davie was a little fellow and easily frightened, and he suddenly clutched my dress and burst into tears, sobbing 'Nana, Nana, it's the _bandarlog_.' Fortunately Margot didn't know her 'Jungle Book,' so she missed the allusion." "What happened to her?" Mrs. Douglas asked. "Oh, Kathleen told me she had met her somewhere quite lately. She married a rich business man, stout and a little deaf--that was all to the good!--and, Kathleen said, looked very fat and prosperous and middle-aged. She said to Kathleen, 'Still painting away?' and Kathleen, greatly delighted, replied, 'Still painting away.'" "Oh, yes, Kathleen would appreciate that remark.... What was your next phase, Ann?" "I had no more _phases_," said Ann, and got up to get a paper to hold between her face and the fire. "I began to go to London for a month in the spring, and Uncle Bob took me with him when he went abroad, and Mark took me to Switzerland to climb--that was absolutely the best holiday of all--and I had a very, very good time." "Yes," said her mother, "I remember a poor bed-ridden girl in the church saying to me wistfully, 'Miss Ann's life is just like a fairy tale.'" Ann nodded. "It must have seemed so to her, poor child! And indeed I was very fortunate; I had such wonderful brothers. But I never really liked going away from home unless we went as a family. I hated to leave Davie. How quickly we all seemed to grow up after we left Kirkcaple, Mother!--Robbie especially. It seems to me, looking back, that he sprang quite suddenly from an incredibly mischievous, rough little boy into a gentle, silent schoolboy."