in and out, coming to show me all their treasures, and going away pleased with a sweetie or a sugar biscuit! They did much to make me feel at home.... When I went back to Etterick in summer I thought Mark was a lovely baby, and that he had a wonderful mother! He wore a pelisse I had made him (under Mrs. Goskirk's eye), cream cashmere, with a wide band of lavender velvet, and a soft, white felt hat with a lavender feather round it. I paid fifteen shillings for the feather and thought it a great price.... For three years we had only Mark, then you and Robbie quite close together. But Mark was never put in the 'stirk's stall'; for you were a healthy, placid baby, and my dear Robbie was just like you. I remember his coming so well. It was a February morning, and Mrs. Perm, the nurse, said: 'Another deil o' a laddie.' She much preferred girls. Robbie was such a _caller_ baby, so fat and good-natured and thriving." "My very first recollection of Robbie," Ann said, "is in the garden. I think it must have been an April morning, for I remember daffodils, and the sun was shining, and the wind tumbling us about, and Mark said to me that he thought Ellie Robbie meant to run away with Robbie, and that it behoved us to save him. As he told me his terrible suspicions Robbie came down the walk pulling behind him a large rake--a little boy with an almost white head, very blue eyes, and very chubby, very rosy cheeks. I remember we separated him from his rake and Mark dragged us both into the gooseberry bushes, where we lay hid until Ellie Robbie (the suspect) came to look for us, bringing us a treat in the shape of a slice each of brown scone spread with marmalade, and two acid drops. That closed the incident." CHAPTER VII On these winter evenings in the Green Glen, when the wind and the rain beat upon the house, and Ann by the fireside wrote down her mother's life, Marget made many errands into the drawing-room to offer advice. "I think"--said Ann one evening--"I think I must have been horribly neglected as a baby. Everyone was so taken up with Mark they hadn't time to look at me." Marget was standing in the middle of the room with her hands folded on her black satin apron; she would have scorned to wear a white apron after working hours. She had come in with a list of groceries to be ordered by post, and stood looking suspiciously at Ann and her writing. "Ye were never negleckit when I kent ye, an' I cam' to the hoose afore ye kent yer richt hand frae yer left. You were a wee white-heided cratur and Maister Robbie wasna shortened." "Ah, but were you there when Mark fell out of the carriage and was so frightfully hurt? I've been told by Aunt Agatha that no one had time to attend to me, and I was just shut up in a room with some toys and fed at intervals. It's a wonder that the Cruelty to Children people didn't get you." "Havers," said Marget.