It took very little to make her laugh, as she told Arthur Townshend. "This has been a nasty day," she wrote. "The rain has never ceased--dripping _yellow_ rain. (By the way, did you ever read in Andrew Lang's _My Own Fairy Book_ about the Yellow Dwarf who bled yellow blood? Isn't it a nice horrible idea?) "At breakfast it struck me that Father looked frail, and Buff sneezed twice, and I made up my mind he was going to take influenza or measles, probably both, so I didn't feel in any spirits to face the elements when I waded out to do my shopping. But when I went into the fruit shop and asked if the pears were good and got the reply 'I'm afraid we've nothing startling in the pear line to-day,' I felt a good deal cheered. Later, walking in Sauchiehall Street, I met Mrs. Taylor in her 'prayer-meeting bonnet,' her skirt well kilted, goloshes on her feet, and her circular waterproof draping her spare figure. After I had assuaged her fears about my own health and Father's and Buff's I complimented her on her courage in being out on such a day. "'I hed to come,' she assured me earnestly; 'I'm on ma way to the Religious Tract Society to get some _cards for mourners_.' "The depressing figure she made, her errand, and the day she had chosen for it, sent me home grinning broadly. Do you know that in spite of ill weather, it is spring? There are three daffodils poking up their heads in the garden, and I have got a new hat to go to London with some day in April. What day, you ask, is some day? I don't know yet. When Buff was a very little boy, a missionary staying in the house said to him, 'And some day you too will go to heaven and sing among the angels.' Buff, with the air of having rather a good excuse for refusing a dull invitation, said, 'I can't go _some day_; that's the day I'm going to Etterick.'" But Elizabeth did not go to London in April. One Sabbath in March, James Seton came in after his day's work admitting himself strangely tired. "My work has been a burden to me to-day, Lizbeth," he said; "I'm getting to be an old done man." Elizabeth scoffed at the idea, protesting that most men were mere youths at sixty. "Just think of Gladstone," she cried. (That eminent statesman was a favourite weapon to use against her father when he talked of his age, though, truth to tell, his longevity was the one thing about him that she found admirable). "Father, I should be ashamed to say that I was done at sixty." Albeit she was sadly anxious, and got up several times in the night to listen at her father's door. He came down to breakfast next morning looking much as usual, but when he rose from the table he complained of faintness, and the pinched blue look on his face made Elizabeth's heart beat fast with terror as she flew to telephone for the doctor. A nurse was got, and for a week James Seton was too ill to worry about anything; but the moment he felt better he wanted to get up and begin work again.