"Mr. Kerr sent his carriage," said her mother, "and we set out to have a picnic on the Loan. We were as merry as children. You were on my knee, Ann, and Agatha sat beside me, your father and Mark opposite. We were about Thornkirk, and Mark, who was always mad about flowers, pointing to the dusty roadside, cried, 'A bluebell,' and suddenly made a spring against the door, which, to our horror, opened, and Mark fell out.... I don't know what happened next. The first thing I knew I was in a cottage frantically pulling at a chest of drawers and crying for something to cover the awful wound. By great good fortune our own doctor happened to pass in his dogcart just then. All he said was, 'Take him home.' ... He stayed with us most of the night, but he could give us no hope that the child would live, or, living, have his reason. For days he lay unconscious, sometimes raving, sometimes pitifully moaning. Agatha and I knew nothing of nursing, and there were no trained nurses in those days--at least, not in Kirkcaple. What would have happened to us all I know not if Mrs. Peat hadn't appeared like a good angel on the scene. It was wonderful of her to come. A fortnight before she had got news that her son in India--her idolised only son--had been killed in some native rising, and she put her own grief aside and came to us. 'My dear,' she said, 'I've come to take the nights, if you will let me. You're young, and you need your sleep.' So every evening she came and sat up--night after night for four long weeks. I used to go into the night nursery on those summer mornings--I was so young and strong that, anxious as I was I couldn't help sleeping--and find Mrs. Peat sitting there with her cap ribbons unruffled, her hair smooth, so serene looking that no one could have believed that she had kept a weary vigil. She was a born nurse, and she possessed a healing touch. I believe she did more than anyone to pull Mark through; and all the time we were in Kirkcaple she was a tower of strength to me. Always twice a week she came up early in the afternoon and stayed till evening, her cap in the neatest little basket in her hand--for she always took off her bonnet. I think I hear her saying, 'Eh, my dear,' with a sort of slow emphasis on the 'my.' She never made mischief in the congregation by boasting how 'far ben' she was at the Manse. She had a mind far above petty things; she dreamed dreams and saw visions." Mrs. Douglas stopped and laughed. "Your father, who admired her very much, had been telling an old body troubled with sleepless nights how Mrs. Peat spent her wakeful hours, and she said to me, 'It's an awfu' job to rowe aboot in this bed a' night; I wisht I had some o' Mrs. Peat's veesions.'"