In addition Bob showed that grave composure of regret which might be expected from a reasonable man and a widower whose grief was a year and a half old. ‘Leezbeth was silly from the time of our marriage,’ continued Bob, not uttering a supercilious reflection on the limited mental capacity of his wife, simply expressing himself in the vernacular for delicate health. ‘She had mostly to keep her bed, for the last year or twa of her life.’ That sentence explained much. The misfortune of having married a sickly wife doomed to die prematurely, may only serve to call forth the deeper tenderness of the rich man whose personal independence and the necessaries--nay, the soothing solaces of whose life, remain altogether untouched by the calamity. But it is a crushing blow to the poor man, however faithfully and gallantly he may bear it. Bob’s slouching gait, haggard face, grey hair and uncared-for clothes were all easily accounted for now, without farther severe reflection either on himself or on his dead wife. They spoke of hard work doubled when rest should have come; of the son of the soil returning from his day’s darg, Wat, wat, wat and weary, with neither a blazing ingle nor a clean hearth-stone, not a single creature-comfort to sustain him; of ill or uncooked food such as a dainty townbred beggar would have turned from in supreme disgust; of a father who had to be father and mother in one to his helpless children; of long nights of waking and watching for the labouring man whose sleep ought to have been sweet. Jean, who understood the circumstances so well, was not the woman to be unmoved by them. ‘But your bairns, Bob?’ she suggested kindly, turning instinctively to what seemed to her the single prospect of better days for the speaker. ‘They will be getting on, and rising up to be a blessing to you?’ ‘They are that already, woman,’ said Bob heartily, while his careworn face brightened inexpressibly, ‘though the auldest of the two lasses, Lizzie and Peggy, is but growing thirteen, and they have to take turn and turn about at their schulin’ and at keepin’ the house. They are as gude and clever, though I should na say sae, as lasses can be. My word! Jean, they can kindle a fire and put out a bannock that would not disgrace yoursel’.’ Here was a trace of the old Bob with his impetuosity and sanguineness. Jean smiled faintly in listening to him, even while she asked herself sternly, how she could be such a weak and wicked sinner as to feel a pang of jealous resentment shoot through her. It was because she heard this poor man who had suffered so much, refer in terms which proved his high esteem for the only thing of value that remained to him--his bairns and Leezbeth Red’s--not Jean’s--to her, who must go a lone woman to her grave through his treachery.