a' night; I wisht I had some o' Mrs. Peat's veesions.'"
"I mind Mistress Peat," said Marget, who had now seated herself; "I mind her fine. She was a rale fine buddy. Miss Peat was a braw wumman. D'ye mind her comin' to a pairty we had in a crimson satin body an' her hair a' crimpit an' pearls aboot as big as bantam's eggs? Eh, I say!"
"I remember the pearls," said Ann. "I suppose they were paste, but I thought the Queen of Sheba couldn't have been much more impressive than Miss Peat. She had a velvet coat trimmed with some sort of feather trimming, and a muff to match—beautiful soft grey feathers. I used to lean against her and stroke it and think it was like a dove's breast. I overheard someone say that it was marvellous to think that the Peats had no servants and that Miss Peat could clean pots and cook, and then emerge like Solomon in all his glory. After that, when we sang the psalm:
'Though ye have lain among the pots
Like doves ye shall appear...'
I thought of Miss Peat in her velvet coat and her soft feathers.... Was she good to you, too, when Mark was so ill?'
"I should think she was—but everyone was good. At the time I took it all as a matter of course, but afterwards I realised it. For days Mark lay delirious, and I was distraught with the thought that his brain might be injured; you see, the wheel passed over the side of his head. When he became conscious at last, the doctor told me to ask him some questions. I could think of nothing, and then I remembered that Mark had had a special fondness for Crichton, our butcher. Trembling, I asked, 'Darling, what is the butcher called?' and in a flash he answered 'Mr. Cwichton.' I wept with relief. But it seemed as if the poor little chap was never to be given a chance to get well. Three times the wound healed and three times it had to be opened again. No wonder our thoughts were all for him, and that you were neglected, Ann, poor child! And you were so good, so little trouble, it almost seemed as if you understood. Mark had a great big wooden box filled with every kind of dry sweetie, and he would sit propped up with pillows, and weigh them, and make them up in little 'pokes.' Sometimes he would ask for you, and you were brought in, so delighted to play on the bed and crawl about, but very soon he tired of you (especially if you touched his sweeties!), and ordered you away. He could not be allowed to cry, and we had to devise things to keep him amused. Opening lucky bags was a great diversion. They cost a ha'penny each, and he made away with dozens in a day. The great difficulty was getting him to eat. At Etterick he was accustomed to going to the milk-house and getting new milk from the pail into his 'tinny,' and when he was ill he wouldn't touch milk, because he said it wasn't 'Etterick milk.' So your father scoured Kirkcaple until he found a 'tinny,' and a pail as nearly as possible like the milk-pails at Etterick, and we took them to the nursery, and said, 'Now, then, Mark, is this real Etterick milk?' and the poor little man held out his thin hands for the 'tinny' and drank greedily.... He lay for six months, and when he got up he had to be taught how to walk! And even after we got him up and out he was the most pathetic little figure, with a bandaged head far too big for his shadow of a body. But I was so proud of having got him so far on the way to recovery that I didn't realise how he looked to outsiders, until a very cruel thing was said to me the very first time I had him out. A man we knew slightly stopped to ask for him, and said, 'It seems almost a pity he pulled through. I'm afraid he will never be anything but an object.' I don't think he meant to hurt me; perhaps it was just sheer stupidity, but ... It was a man called Temple who said it. You never knew him, Ann."
"Temple," said Marget. "Dauvit Temple the manufacturer? Eh, the impident fella'. Him to ca' onybody, let alone Mr. Mark, an objec'. Objec' himsel'. It wad hae been tellin' him if he hed fa'en on his heid an' gien his brains a bit jumble, but I doot if the puir sowl had ony to jumble; he hed a heid like a hen. He was fit for naething but ridin' in a high dogcart an' tryin' to forget that his dacent auld mither bleached her claes on the Panny Braes an' his faither worked in the pit. But ye needna fash yersel' aboot him and his sayin's noo, Mem. He's gone to his reward—such as it is."
"Indeed, Marget, it's a poor thing to bear malice, and I believe that awful accident was the making of Mark. He grew up as strong as a Shetland pony. He was an extraordinarily clever little boy. We were told not to try and teach him till he was seven, but he taught himself to read from the posters. He asked endless questions of everyone he met, and so acquired information. There was nothing he wasn't interested in, and every week brought a fresh craze. At one time it was fowls, and he spent hours with Mrs. Frew, a specialist on the subject, and came home with coloured pictures of prize cocks which he insisted on pinning round the nursery walls. For a long time it was ships, and he and Mr. Peat, who was a retired sea-captain, spent most of their time at the harbour. Next it was precious stones, and he accosted every lady (whether known to him or not), and asked her about the stones she was wearing."
"Yes," said Ann, "he was a wonderful contrast to Robbie and me. We never asked for information on any subject, for we wanted none. We were ignorant and unashamed, and we used to look with such bored eyes at Mark and wonder how he could be bothered. It was really disgusting for the rest of us to have such a clever eldest brother. He set a standard which we couldn't hope—indeed, we never thought of trying—to attain to. What a boy he was for falling on his head! He had been warned that if he cut open the wound in his head again it would never heal, so when he fell from a tree, or a cart, or a pony, or whatever he was on at the moment, we stood afar off and shouted, 'Is it your wound, Mark?' prepared on hearing it was to run as far as our legs would carry us. That is a child's great idea when trouble comes—to run away from it. Once Mark—do you remember?—climbed the white lilac tree in my garden on a Sunday afternoon and, slipping, fell on a spiked branch and hung there. Instead of going for help I ran and hid among the gooseberry bushes, and he wasn't rescued until you came home from church."
"That was too bad of you," her mother said, "for Mark had always a great responsibility for you. One day when there was a bad thunderstorm I found him dragging you by the hand to the nursery—such a fat, sulky little thing you looked.
"'I'm going to pray for Ann,' he told me. 'She won't pray for herself.'"
CHAPTER VIII
"I don't know," said Mrs. Douglas, "when I first realised what was expected of me as a minister's wife. I suppose I just grew to it. At first I visited the people and tried to take an interest in them, because I felt it to be my duty, and then I found that it had ceased to be merely duty, and that one couldn't live among people and not go shares with them. It was the long anxiety about Mark that really drew us together and made us friends in a way that years of prosperity would never have done. There was hardly a soul in the congregation who didn't try to do us some little kindness in those dark days. Fife people are suspicious of strangers and rather aloof in their manner, but once you are their friend you are a friend for life. Ours was a working-class congregation (with a sprinkling of well-to-do people to help us along)—miners, and workers in the linoleum factories—decent, thrifty folk. Trade was dull all the time we were in Kirkcaple, and wages were low—ridiculously low when you think of the present-day standard, and it was a hard struggle for the mothers with big young families. Of course, food was cheap—half a loaf and a biscuit for twopence—and 'penny haddies,' and eggs at ninepence a dozen—and people hadn't the exalted ideas they have now."
"Well," said Ann, who was busy filling her fountain-pen, "I seem to remember rather luxurious living about the Mid Street, and the Nether Street, and the Watery Wynd. Don't you remember I made friends with some girls playing 'the pal-lals' in the street, and fetched them home with me, and when upbraided for so doing by Ellie Robbie in the nursery, I said, 'But they're gentry; they get kippers to their tea.' My 'bare-footed gentry' became a family jest."
Mrs. Douglas laughed, "I remember. To save your face we let them stay to tea, but you were told 'Never again.'"
