"_Don't_ I?" said Ann. "I was only about nine when we left Kirkcaple, but I remember every detail of it. Just outside the nursery window there was a bush of flowering currant. Do _you_ remember that? And jasmine, and all sorts of creepers grew up the house. There was a big square lawn before the window, rather sloping, with two long flowerbeds at the top and herbaceous borders round the high walls. Our own especial gardens were at the top of the kitchen garden. Mark had a Rose of Sharon tree in his garden about which he boasted; it seemed to set him a little apart. I had a white lilac tree in mine; Robbie, severely practical, grew nothing but vegetables, while Jim, when asked what his contained, said simply and truthfully, 'Wurrums.' Rosamond was a tiny baby when we left Kirkcaple, and the little lad knew only Glasgow. It was surely a very large garden, Mother? The gooseberry bushes alone seemed to me to extend for miles, and in a far-away corner there was the pigsty. Why was it called 'the pigsty'? In our day there was never anything in it but two much-loved Russian rabbits with pink eyes, Fluffy and Pluffy. I have a small red text-book in which, on a certain date, is printed in large round hand: 'This day Fluffy died. " " Pluffy " ' A ferret got in and sucked their blood. What a day of horror that was! The roof of the pigsty sloped up to the top of the wall, and we liked to sit on the wall and say rude things to the children on the road, they retorting with stones and clods of earth. We were all bonnie fighters. You had no notion, you and Father, when we came down to tea with well-brushed hair and flannel-polished faces, of the grim battles we had just emerged from. The enemy was even then at the gate. We, with ears to hear, knew what sundry dull thuds against the front door meant. Marget, wrathful but loyal, wiped away the dirt and said nothing to you--lots to us, though! ... But I'm getting years ahead. You were just arriving with baby Mark to an empty, echoing Manse, through ways heavy with November mud. Sorry I interrupted." "As to that," said her mother, "I was really just talking to myself. It is good of you to listen to my maunderings about the past." "Not at all," Ann said solemnly; and then, "You daft wee mother, now that courtesies have been exchanged will you go on with that _Life_ of yours? It will take us years at this rate. What happened when you tottered into the Manse? Did you regret the little sunny, bow-windowed Manse in Inchkeld?"