he
was back home again, being told what to do.

Andrew began to rub his eyes.

"Yell be getting away to your bed now, Andrew," said Aunt Janet.

Jean stood up, waiting for him. He hugged his father and mother, shook
hands with the doctor and looked searchingly at Aunt Janet before he
kissed her. She put her hand behind the curtain, rustled a piece of
paper and gave him an acid drop.

"I used tae pit Marcella, yer mither, tae her bed when she was a wee
thing," said Jean, taking his small brown hand. He put the sweet into
his mouth and trotted off beside her. At the door he stopped to kiss his
hand to his mother. The rats scuttled across the floor above; one in the
wainscoting scratched and gnawed. Andrew hesitated and came back a few
steps. They were all watching him.

"Mummy!" he began in a very thin little voice. Marcella started as if to
go to him, and sat back suddenly.

"Andwew will kill wats--wiv a big stick," he said, and marched out of
the room before Jean.

Before a week had gone by it seemed to Marcella that she had never been
away from Lashnagar. The place wrapped her round, took possession of
her. She took Louis down to the huts to see Wullie; she toasted herrings
over the fire, and Louis was unexpectedly friendly; the only difference
was that Jock was not there any more when the fishing boats came in; and
where she had left girls and boys she found young men and women and
little babies: they grew up quickly on the hillside. Louis went with her
on Ben Grief and saw the old grey house. He wandered on Lashnagar and
looked down the terrifying chasms, and heard the screaming of the gulls;
and he was unutterably wretched and out of it all.

On Lashnagar he said to her, one day:

"Marcella, it ought to be made compulsory for people, before they think
of being married, to find out all about each other's youth."

"Like that poem of poor Lamb's?" she said. "Oh thou dearer than a
brother! Why wast thou not born within my father's dwelling? So might we
talk of the old familiar faces--Yes, I believe there's a lot in it."

"Since I've been here and seen things, I've understood you better.
Seeing your home, and mine, and thinking how we were the products of
those homes! I'm glad young Andrew is here, till it's time for him to go
to school. I see where you get your friendliness that used to shock me,
and your hardness. I'd like him to get it all."

"I was hoping to protect him from it," she said. "But I know y