Mrs. Douglas stopped knitting and looked thoughtfully into the fire. "Robbie," she said--how soft, thought Ann, her mother's voice was when it named her boys--"Robbie changed quite suddenly. Up to thirteen he was the firebrand of the household. Your father alone never lost patience with his wild laddie. 'Let him alone,' he would say, 'he'll be the best of the lot yet.' Marget used to say, 'There's naething for it but to make him a sodger; the laddie canna get his fill o' fechtin'.' I don't know what changed him. I think he just got sense. Children do, if you let them alone. He began to be keen to take a good place at school. Robbie had lots of brains, Ann." "Oh, brains! He was one of the most capable men I ever knew. In India there was no limit to the expectations his friends had for him." "Oh, Ann, I wish he hadn't gone to India, but his heart was set on it always. The Indian Army! How he used to talk to me about it, and beg me not to make a fuss about letting him go! I would have been so pleased if all my boys had been ministers. I used to picture to myself, when you were all little, how I would go from manse to manse, and what a proud mother I would be. I never could bear the Army as a profession; your father and I never saw eye to eye about that----" "Poor Mother, it was too bad! You wanted nice little clucking barndoor fowls, and you found yourself with young eagles! I know. It would have been a lovely life for you to do nothing but visit manses. I can see you doing it. But even you stretched your wings a little. Was the South African trip a silver-wedding jaunt?" "Yes; don't you remember? The congregation gave us a cheque at your father's semi-jubilee, and that was how we spent it." "Oh, the semi-jubilee!" said Ann. "That was a great occasion. A social meeting, with tea and cakes and speakers and presentations. Eminent men brought from a distance to say complimentary things to you and Father, and all sorts of old friends from Inchkeld and Kirkcaple came with offerings, and so many of them stayed with us that the family had to be boarded out! We acquired a lot of loot at that time in the way of fitted dressing-cases and silver things, and we had a gorgeous silver-wedding cake. Robbie had thought that you couldn't have a bridescake unless you were being married, and when he found he had been mistaken he said the only reason for marrying was gone! It was a glorious cake. The boys were all at home for the Christmas holidays, and when they got hungry in the forenoon they would go and cut chunks off it with a pen-knife--until we had to hide it. You didn't go away directly, Mums. It was the next November before you left for South Africa, and what a business it was getting you away!"