“Eh!” said the aunt in astonishment, “useless! but what would ye have them to be, and you a rich man? You wouldna have had me bring them up like a puir body’s bairns? They are just as well conditioned as can be, bidable, and pleased with what’s set before them. I’ve had no trouble with them: they will never have given me a sore heart but when they’re taken from me--Oh, I’m no saying a word! It’s your right and it’s your duty too. They maun go, and I’ve aye counted upon it--and God’s blessing’ll go with them. They’ve never given me a sleepless night nor a day’s trouble. Oh, man, be thankful! There’s no mony that can say as much. The first sore heart they’ll give me is when they go away.” The good woman sat down upon one of the many gilded and decorated chairs of which she was so proud, and put her handkerchief over her face as she might have done the apron which she was no longer happy enough to wear, and lifted up her voice and wept: “My hoose will be left to me desolate,” she said, “me that has been, though with none of my ain, a joyful mother of children. But I’ll no say a word. It’s just what I’ve known would happen this many and many a year. And it’s my pride and pleasure to think that I give them back to you, everything that two good bairns should be.” Rowland was silenced once and for all. He had not a word to say to the woman thus deeply conscious of having fulfilled her trust. There was something pathetic in the thought that the two children who were so unsatisfactory, so disappointing and incomplete to him were to this kind woman the highest achievement of careful training, everything that boy and girl could be, and that their mother would have been of the same opinion had she lived to see this day. CHAPTER XII.