Ann nodded. "So he was, always. Though he was so turbulent and noisy he was so uncunning you couldn't but think nobly of the soul. Mark and I thought of the mischievous things to do, and Robbie threw himself into them so whole-heartedly that generally he was the one caught and blamed. The rest of us were better at wriggling out of things. Father was never hard on us unless we cheated or told lies. He wasn't even angry when the policeman complained of us--do you remember the one, an elder in our church, who said in despair to his wife, 'I'll hae to jail thae bairns and leave the kirk'? One of the few times I ever saw Father really angry was when he was holding a class for young communicants, and we crept into the cubby-hole under the stairs, where the meter was, and _turned off the gas_. Father emerged from the study like a lion, and caught poor Jim, who had loitered. The rest of us had gained the attics and were in hiding. It must have been a great day for the young communicants." "Ann! It was a shocking thing to do; it would have roused the mildest-mannered man." "Father was very good-natured," said Ann, kneeling on the rug to put a log on the fire; "but it was never safe to presume too much on his mildness. He was subject to sudden and incomprehensible rages. One day I innocently remarked that somebody had a 'polly' arm. I didn't know that I meant a paralysed arm; I was only repeating what I had heard others say, but Father grabbed me suddenly and said, 'You wretched child! Where do you pick up those abominable expressions? Go to the nursery.' I went weeping, feeling bitterly the injustice with which I had been treated. But for every once that Father made us cry, a hundred times he filled our mouths with laughter. All our best games were invented by him. Whenever he put his head round the nursery door, we knew we were going to have good times. There was a glorious game about India, in which the nursery became a trackless jungle, and Father was an elephant with a pair of bellows for a trunk. Sometimes on a Sunday night, as a great treat, we were allowed to play Bible games. Then we would march round and round the nursery table, blowing lustily on trumpets to cause the walls of Jericho to fall, or Robbie as Jeremiah would be let down by Mark and me into the pit (which was the back of the old sofa), with 'clouts under his armpits'; or, again, he and Mark lay prostrate on the sofa (now the flat roof of an Eastern house), while I, as Rahab, covered them with flax. I have the nicest recollections of winter evenings in the study, with the red curtains drawn, and you sitting mending, when we lay on the hearth-rug, and Father read to us of Bruce, and Wallace, and that lonely, lovely lady, Mary of Scotland; but my most cherished memory is of a December day in Glasgow. It was a yellow fog that seemed to press down on us and choke us. You were out when we came in from our walk, the fire wasn't good,