mother's. If the
bairns had been extra good she would gather them about her there after
the lamp was lit, and show them everything. The letters were read over
and over, and the children knew all about Dorothy's doll that could
speak and sleep, and Jim's rocking-horse which Santa Claus had brought,
and the new little brother that had come to Mary's home. Then the
photographs of Dorothy, and Fay and her brother, and Christine and
Happy, and others would be spread out and talked about and admired
again. There were also the little gifts sent to her, just trifles, but
very precious to her, because some bairn at home had worked at them.
"To think of the trouble they took," she would say.

And the heather! How Ma loved it! These dry bits of plants brought tears
to her eyes and sent her thoughts away across the wide sea to the
homeland, and she saw in vision the glint of the sun, and the shadow of
the cloud on the purple moors, and felt the scent of the heather and the
tang of the salt sea breeze, and heard again the cry of the whaup.

"That's the Bonkle heather," she would say; "oh, the kind hearts there."
"And that's the Blairgowrie heather and bog myrtle; never a year but it
comes, and it is like a call across the sea."

One package she opened very tenderly, for it held the wee toys and
well-worn books of a little boy who had died. They had been sent out to
her from the heart-broken mother. Ma could never look at this beautiful
gift without her eyes growing misty with tears.

In another corner was a cupboard filled with china and coloured glass,
very common, but very rare in Ma's eyes, because they were gifts bought
by the bairns at market or factory with their odd pennies and shyly
offered to her. She often scolded them well for wasting their money in
such a way, but all the same she was proud of these tokens of their
love.

Then, softened by sweet memories and kind feelings, the family went to
evening prayers. The children, squatting on the floor, read verses
round, and Ma talked to them simply about higher things, sometimes in
Scots, sometimes in Efik, after which they would sing old psalms or
hymns, like "Now Israel may say," which was one of Ma's favourites. No
books were used, and woe betide the bairn or visitor who did not know
the beginning of the next verse! Ma, however, liked the children to
learn new hymns, and sometimes they could be heard singing the tuneful
ones in the yard or away in the bush or on the ro