“Oh, I dare not--I dare not! Oh, I cannot go with ye, Kirsteen! You don’t know, you’ve got great courage--but me, I’m just a coward. Oh, I canna go.” “My mother is dying,” said Kirsteen, “and crying for you and me. Can we let her go down to her grave without a word? We’ve both left her in her life, and maybe we were to blame; but to leave her to die is more than I can do. Anne, you must come.” Anne fell back in her chair, her rosy face the colour of ashes, her plump person limp with terror and dismay. “Oh, I canna go. Oh, I canna leave the bairns! Oh, David!” She turned to him with a gasp, terrified by the blazing of Kirsteen’s eyes. “Well, my dear,” said the doctor, “your sister’s right and ye ought to go. But when ye get there,” he added turning to Kirsteen, “have you any surety that they will let you in? To go all that way for nothing would be little good to your mother: and I will not have my wife insulted with a door steekit in her face--even if it is her father’s door.” “I have this surety,” said Kirsteen, feeling herself to tower over them though she was not very tall, “that I will see my mother, whoever steeks the door in my face, nor think twice if it was the King himself.” “The King’s the first gentleman in the country,” said the doctor shrugging his shoulders, “but your father?” “He is just my father, Dr. Dewar, and Anne’s father, and we will say no more; the question is my mother that never harmed living creature nor said an unkind word. How can ye stop to consider, Anne? Your mother! The more ye cherish your bairns the more ye should mind upon her.” “I think, my dear,” said the doctor, “that it’s your duty to go. It might pave the way to a reconciliation,” he added, “which would be good for us all and good for the bairns. I think you should go.” “Oh, David!” was all that Anne said. Kirsteen stood and looked upon them all with a flash of scorn. Was this the effect of marrying and being happy as people say? The little plump mother with her rosy face no longer capable of responding to any call outside of her own little circle of existence, the babies delving with their spoons into the porridge, covering their faces and pinafores, or holding up little gaping mouths to be fed. It had been a delightful picture which she had come in upon before at an earlier stage, when Anne had wept at her mother’s name, and cried wistfully for a message from home, and longed to show her children. That had all been sweet--but now it was sweet no longer. The prosaic interior, the bondage of all these little necessities, the loosening of all other bonds of older date or wider reach, was this what happiness meant? Sometimes a sudden _aperçu_ of this kind will flash through the mind of one for whom those ties are forbidden and give a consolation, a compensation to the fancy. But the thought only passed as swiftly as a breath through the mind of Kirsteen.