“Dear me,” said Mrs. Brown, appearing in the room, and using her full and sonorous voice, “May, what tempted ye to bring a gentleman into this small bit of a room--just a family parlour, no fit for visitors, and the drawing-room standing useless up the stair? I havena heard your name, sir, but I’m sure I’m glad to see ye. I was in the middle of some femily business, and I could not get away before.” Her appearance, however, contradicted this excuse. Mrs. Brown had put on a silk dress of a brilliant colour, which she called ruby, and which glistened and rustled exceedingly. She wore a big locket on her ample bosom; her watch, a large one, was twisted into her belt, depending from a long and heavy gold chain, which was round her neck. She had a number of rings upon her fingers. Her cap was an elaborate construction trimmed with ribbons of the same colour as her dress. Her appearance, indeed, as, large and ruddy and full of colour, she came in through the narrow doorway, turned the very atmosphere in the room to a rosy hue. “Jane,” said Rowland, rising from his chair. She gave a scream, and gazed at him with wondering eyes. “Wha are ye?--wha are ye?--for I’m sure that I’ve seen ye before. The lass has no sense to ask a visitor his name.” “Is it possible that ye don’t know me, Jane?” “God bless us!” she said, “it’s just Jims Rowland himself! Eh, man, I’m glad to see ye, Jims. Is it just you!--bairns, it’s your papaw. Lord bless me that I should been such a time putting on my cap, and Jims Rowland waiting for me down the stair.” “Papa-w!” with about half of a W at the end of the last syllable, said Archie. “Papa!” said Marion. They were both discomfited, but the girl least. She fell back a little upon the bodyguard as it were of her brother. “It was _you_ that said that about the new family,” she whispered in Archie’s ear. “I am not denying it,” said Archie. “He had no business to come in like this and take us unawares.” Mrs. Brown gave Rowland a fat hand to shake and then she subsided into a chair and began to cry: “Eh, to think it should be you! and sae mony years come and gane since ye parted with us a’--and such things as have happened. Ye was but young then and your heart was running on many a thing out of common folks’ way--and to see ye back again looking little the worse, and a’ your fancies fulfilled! It’s just the maist wonderful thing I ever heard of. But eh! Jims Rowland, you’re an awfu’ changed man from what ye were when ye went away.” “I am seventeen years older,” Rowland said. “It’s no that--but you’re far different. You were a heartbroken lad then. ‘Twas for the loss of your wife, my bonnie sister Mary--and now you’re back with a new lady to put out her very name from the airth.” “I think,” said Rowland in his own defence, “that not to marry again for more than sixteen years was surely enough to show my respect for her memory.”