"Oh, the poor body!" said Mrs. Douglas. "I know so well what she meant. It sounds funny, but it isn't a bit.... Your father's death was sheer desolation to me. I remember, a long time ago at Kirkcaple, going to see a widow who had brought up a most creditable family, and, looking round her cosy kitchen, I said something about how well she had done, and that life must be pleasant for her with her children all up and doing well. And the brisk, active little woman looked at me, and I was surprised to see tears in her rather hard eyes. "The bairns are a' richt," she said; "but it maks an awfu' difference when ye lose yer pairtner....' And then I have so many things to regret...." "Regret?" Ann laughed. "I don't think you have one single thing to regret. If ever a man was happy in his home it was my father." "Ah, but I was bad to him often. I pretended to be a Radical--a thing I never was really--simply from contrariness. If I had him back----" "Now what would you change if you could?" Ann asked. "Well, for one thing I would never contradict him, or argue..." "Oh, how Father would have loathed that. Arguing was the breath of life to him, and he hated to be agreed with." Mrs. Douglas went on. "And I would never worry him to do things that went against his judgment. When people took a _tirravee_ and sent for their lines he always wanted to give them to them at once, but I used to beg him to go and reason with them and persuade them to remain. They generally did, for they only wanted to be made a fuss of, but I see now I was quite wrong; people so senseless deserved no consideration. And I wouldn't worry him to go and ask popular preachers to come to us for anniversary services and suchlike occasions! That was the thing he most hated doing." "I don't wonder," said Ann. "To ask favours is never pleasant, and popular preachers are apt to get a bit above themselves and condescend a little to the older, less successful men who are living in a day of small things. But I don't think any of us, you least of all, need reproach ourselves with not having appreciated Father. And yet, when he went away it seemed quite wrong to mourn for him. To have pulled long faces and gone about plunged in grief would have been like an insult to the happy soul who had finished his day's work and gone home. It wasn't a case of 'Better by far you should forget and smile, Than that you should remember and be sad.' It was simply that we had so many happy things to remember we couldn't but smile. We wouldn't have had anything changed. To the very end his ways were ways of pleasantness and all his paths were peace. But when Robbie died----" Ann stopped, and her mother took up her words: