"I remember that visit to Burntisland," Mrs. Douglas said. "I had to take you into a shop on the way home and buy you biscuits. Your father wanted some, too--a handed-round tea was no use to him; he liked a breakfast-cup filled several times. I don't think I was ever guilty of starving children of wedding-cake. I got surfeited with it myself, and a big family from across the way used to come in to help us away with all that was left over from our parties. We were glad to get things eaten up in those days. Both my own mother and your father's mother constantly sent us boxes of eatables as if we had been on a desert island instead of in a city of shops--great mutton-hams, and haggis, and noble Selkirk bannocks; I was afraid of them coming to our little household. How glad I would have been to see them in later years, when I had growing children to feed! But the kind hands that packed them were still.... We could entertain only in a very small way in our very small house, but we were asked to quite a lot of dinner-parties. They were evenings of dread to me. I was so shockingly bad at making conversation. I blushed fiercely when anyone spoke to me, and must have presented an appearance of such callowness that I provoked pity in the hearts of kindly people. One dear old lady said to me, 'My dear, have you cut your wisdom teeth yet?' ... In September Mark was born. It was prayer-meeting night, and Maggie Ann carelessly let the cat eat my canary. They didn't tell me about it until I asked why I wasn't hearing him singing. Mark was a tiny, delicate baby, but he was perfect in our eyes. We looked with distaste at large fat children, who made poor little Mark look so puny and fragile, and told each other that they were 'coarse,' and that we were glad our baby wasn't like that. When I was able to travel we set off with our precious new possession to Etterick. Agatha had been with us most of the summer, but my mother didn't come; she liked to stay in her own house and welcome us there." "A most detached woman, my grandmother," said Ann. "You are rather like her, Ann," said Mrs. Douglas. "Yes, I have the same aversion to staying in other people's houses, and I share her dislike to the casual kissing that so many people indulge in--people who are mere acquaintances. You should only kiss really great friends at really serious times, and then it means something." Mrs. Douglas laughed. "Nobody ever took a liberty with your grandmother. My father was utterly different, the most approachable of men. People were always asking favours from him; he liked them to. He didn't care how much he went out of his way to help anyone, and his hand was never out of his pocket." "You must be exactly like grandfather. I think you are one of the very few people left living in the world who do take trouble about their fellow-mortals. The rest of us are too selfish to bother."