Then he sat down and occupied himself with his meal, eating ravenously, like a man who had not seen food for days. When the chicken came he tore it asunder (tearing the poor old lady’s heart a little, in addition to all deeper wounds, by the irreverent rending of the food, on which, she had also remarked, he asked no blessing), and ate the half of it without stopping. His mother sat by and looked on. Many a time had she sat by rejoicing, and seen Robbie, as she had fondly said, “devour” his supper, with happy laugh and jest, and questions and answers, the boy fresh from his amusements, or perhaps, though more rarely, his work--with so much to tell her, so much to say,--she beaming upon him, proud to see how heartily he ate, rejoicing in his young vigour and strength. Now he ate in silence, like a wild animal, as if it might be his last meal; while she sat by, the shadow of her head upon the wall behind her showing the tremor which she hoped she had overcome, trying to say something now and then, not knowing what to say. He had looked up after his first onslaught upon the food, and glanced round the table. “Have you no beer?” he said. Mrs Ogilvy jumped up nervously. “There is the table-beer we have for Andrew,” she said. “You will have whisky, at least. I must have something to drink with my dinner,” he answered, morosely. Mrs Ogilvy knew many uses for whisky, but to drink it, not after, but with dinner, was not one that occurred to her. She brought out the old-fashioned silver case eagerly from the sideboard, and sought among the shelves where the crystal was for the proper sized glass. But he poured it out into the tumbler, to her horror, dashing the fiery liquid about and filling it up with water. “I suppose,” he said again, looking round him with a sort of angry contempt, “there’s no soda-water here?” “We can get everything on Monday, whatever you like, my--my dear,” she said, in her faltering voice. Afterwards she was glad to leave him, to go up-stairs and help Janet, whose steps she heard overhead in the room so long unused--his room, where she had always arranged everything herself, and spent many an hour thinking of her boy, among all the old treasures of his childhood and youth. It was a room next to her own--a little larger--“for a lad has need of room, with his big steps and his long legs,” she had many a time said. She found Janet hesitating between two sets of sheets brought out from Mrs Ogilvy’s abundant store of napery, one fine, and one not so fine. “It’s a grand day his coming hame,” Janet said. “Ye’ll mind, mem, a ring on his finger and shoes on his feet: it’s true that shoon are first necessaries, but no the ring on his finger.”