At last the members of Bob’s family arrived simultaneously, the lasses with their bleached hair and round rosy faces, and the puny little lad. Lizzie was lugging along her brother in her motherly young arms, Peggy had her bag with her books hung round her neck. There was no particular sign of that seeking to get their heads out of the yoke which Eppie had foreboded, though they might not have been guiltless of the light-heartedness of sticking burrs on each other’s backs for the last quarter of an hour. But the two, and even the small child, having a spindly arm hanging loosely across the breast of his sister’s blue pinafore, with his eyes looking large and hollow like his father’s, in his wasted mite of a face, stared open-mouthed at Jean. In vain their father strove to do the honours with the best effect. ‘Gie me the bairn, Lizzie. This is Lizzie and thon’s Peggy, Jean; and here’s an auld friend of mine, lasses.’ In his deep anxiety that the children might make a favourable impression on his old friend, Bob suddenly fell foul of the objects of his devotion with a sharpness of fault-finding which not only took them completely by surprise, but drove them into a frame of mind still more stupid and provoking. ‘Ha’e you no a tongue in your head, Lizzie?’ Bob reproached his eldest-born cuttingly. ‘And as for you, Peggy,’ he turned furiously on the second girl, ‘lowse that bag from your neck this minute, and put aff that bannet that you have a’ but torn the croon frae since you left hame this morning. What garred you be sae royd--and noo you are as blate, when I would have had you look wiselike and behave your best no to disgrace yoursel’s and me.’ Bob ended with a groan of disappointment--well-nigh despair. Jean had to interfere with her womanly forbearance and consideration. ‘Let them alane, Bob. There’s naithing wrang. What would you ha’e o’ the bairns--fine bairns, who I am sure will do a’ they can to please you?’ But Bob’s heart melted utterly to his youngest-born, his son and heir, and he failed to attack him with scathing sarcasm. ‘Here’s Jockie,’ he said, smiling on the child that nestled in his left arm. ‘Tak him frae me, Jean, he’ll no greet--he’s the best manners o’ us a’--he’s sic a licht wecht, though he’s a hantle heavier than he was six months syne, you’ll no feel it, even though you’re tired,’ said Bob, putting his darling awkwardly with his one free hand into Jean’s arms. He gave a sigh half of speechless satisfaction, half of unfathomable sorrow--looking in her face at the same time, seeking to hear her utter her tribute to the child’s attractions, and hanging breathlessly on what was likely to be her outspoken verdict of whether it was to be life or death for the lad.