“Knew him!--what would hinder me to know him?” Susie replied, with the same air of that offence and grievance which was more tender than love itself. “Oh, me! I was not like that,” the mother cried. She remembered her first horror of him, with horror at herself. She that was his mother, flesh of his flesh, and bone of his bone. And here was Susie, that had neither trouble nor doubt. “To think I should come in thinking about nothing--thinking about my own small concerns--and find him there as innocent! like a tired bairn. And me perhaps the only one,” said Susie, “never to have heard a word! though the oldest friend--I do not mind the time I did not know Robbie,” she cried, with that keen tone of injury; “it began with our life.” Here was the difference. He too had admitted that he remembered her very well--a pretty girl; but she must be old now, and have lost her looks. Susie had not lost her looks; it was he who had lost his looks. Mrs Ogilvy’s heart sank, as she thought how completely those looks were lost, and of the unfavourable aspect of that heavy sleep, and the attitude of drowsy abandonment in the middle of the busy day. But Susie was conscious of none of these things. CHAPTER XII. The day after this was one of the days on which Robert chose to go to Edinburgh, which were days his mother dreaded, though no harm that she could specify came of them. He had not seen Susie on that afternoon, but was angry and put out when he heard of her visit, and that she had seen him asleep in his chair. “You might have saved me from that,” he said, angrily; “you need not have made an exhibition of me.” “I did not know, Robbie, that she was there.” “It is the same thing,” he cried: “you keep all your doors and windows open, in spite of everything I say. What’s that but making an exhibition of me, that am something new, that anybody that likes may come and stare at?” She thought he had reason for his annoyance, though it was no fault of hers: and it pleased her that he should be angry at having been seen by Susie in circumstances so unfavourable. Was not that the best thing for him to be roused to a desire to appear at his best, not his worse? He went to Edinburgh next day in the afternoon, after the early dinner. There was no question put to him now as to when he should be back.