Miss Aggie, the youngest of the aforesaid weans, plunged out of the kitchen, and seized the baby with loud expressions of admiration. The little wife was easily flattered by praise of that blue-eyed boy of hers, and was by no means unwilling to accompany him herself, and exhibit him to the assembled “weans” in Mrs. Rodger’s kitchen. This apartment, which answered all purposes to the family, was a good-sized room, showing an expanse of uncovered floor, not over clean, and a great wooden “bunker” for coals, as its most noticeable feature. The “bunker” is an article which belongs exclusively to the household arrangements of Glasgow. This one was not very high as it happened, and on the corner of it sat Miss Jeanie, her hands busy with her work, her feet deposited on a chair below. Miss Aggie, in like manner, occupied a corner of the table in the window. Their work required a good deal of light, and they were fettered by no punctilios as to attitude. Miss Rodger, the eldest sister, flitted in and out of a dark scullery--and withdrawn as far as possible from the light, in the dusky corner, by the fireside, sat a shabby and not very young man, with shuffling indolent limbs stretched across the hearth, and pins, the sole gathering of his idleness, stuck in the lappel of his dusty, worn coat, and a face that promised better things. This was “Johnnie,” as they called him, Mrs. Rodger’s only son. Poor Johnnie had begun this sad manner of life by a long illness, and now, between his rheumatism and his false shame, incapable, as it seemed, of any strenuous endeavour to make up for what he had lost, had sunk into the state of an indolent dependant upon the little earnings of his sisters. They had their faults, these women; but never one of them murmured at the burden thus thrown upon them. Living very meanly, as they were constrained to do, they were still perfectly content to toil for Johnnie. It never seemed to occur to them at all, indeed, that the natural order of things was reversed in their case. Sometimes, it is true, there was a quarrel between the mother, who was a termagant, and the poor indolent shipwrecked son, whose temper was easily galled, having always this sore consciousness to bear it company--but never one of the sisters upbraided Johnnie, or made a merit of labouring for him. Amidst all their vanity, and vulgarity, this one feature elevated the character of the family, and gave to those three very common-place young women, a standing-ground of which no one could possibly be less conscious than they were themselves. The large good-humoured hoyden, Miss Aggie, danced the baby in her arms, and carried him to the fireside to her brother. Poor Johnnie took the boy more gently, and praised him to his mother’s heart’s content, while Violet, no longer shy, but at present very fluent and talkative, stood by the side of her special friend and ally, Mr. John. The little girl and the poor indolent man, were on very intimate terms.