Mrs. Douglas laughed, and told her daughter not to exaggerate. "Mrs. Nicol was a particularly nice woman, and there was nothing wrong with John and Mackenzie except high spirits. Mackenzie came to see us at Priorsford--I think you must have been away from home--such a quiet, well-mannered young fellow. Both he and his brother are doing very well. The Nicols were mild compared to the Wrights--you remember Phil and Ronald?" Ann threw up her hands at the mention of the names. "The Wrights," she said, "were really the frozen edge. The only thing Mrs. Wright had ever been able to teach her offspring was to call her 'Mother dear,' which they did religiously. Davie was no model, but he sat round-eyed at the performance of the Wrights when they came to tea. They mounted on the table and pranced among the butter and jam dishes, and to all their mother's anguished entreaties to desist they replied, in the broadest of accents, 'We wull not, Mother dear--we wull not.' They thought Davie's accent rather finicking--Davie's accent which at that stage was a compound of low Glasgow and broad Linlithgow picked up from the nursemaid--and asked, 'Is Davie English, Mother dear?' "'No, no, darlings' (Mrs. Wright's own accent was all that there was of the most genteel), 'he only speaks nicely.' Marget used to shake her head over the Wrights and say, 'Eh, I say, thae bairns need a guid skelpin'.'" "Yes," said Mrs. Douglas; "but the last time I saw the Wright boys they were the most glossy-looking creatures--you know the kind of young men whose hair looks unnaturally bright and whose clothes fit almost too well; don't you call them 'knuts'?--with supercilious manners and Glasgow-English voices, and I rather yearned for the extremely bad but quite unaffected little boys they once had been." "I know; one often regrets the 'lad that is gone.' Boys are like pigs, they are nicest when they are small. Talking of the Wrights reminds me of a children's party we once gave, to which you invited a missionary's little girl, and two black boys. You had never seen them and thought they would be quite tiny, and when they came they were great strong creatures with _pointed teeth_. Somebody told us they had teeth like that because they were cannibals, and, after hearing that, it was a nightmare evening. We played hide-and-seek, and every one screamed with terror when caught by the poor black boys. It was terrible to see them eating sandwiches at supper and reflect on what they would have _liked_ to eat." "Oh, Ann! The poor innocents! They weren't cannibals; they were rescued by the missionaries when they were babies. But I must say I was rather alarmed when I saw how big they were. They didn't realise their own strength, and I was afraid they might hurt some of the little ones. I spent an anxious evening, too."