rally lazy myself (except as to the reading of books), I took
a great pleasure in watching grandmother. Aunt Jen would order you to
get some work if she saw you doing nothing--malingering, she called
it--yes, and find it for you too, that is, if Mary Lyon were not in the
house to tell her to mind her own business.

But you might lie round among grandmother's feet for days, and, except
for a stray cuff in passing if she actually walked into you--a cuff
given in the purest spirit of love and good-will, and merely as a
warning of the worse thing that might happen to you if you made her
spill the dinner "sowens"--you might spend your days in reading anything
from the _Arabian Nights_ in Uncle Eben's old tattered edition to the
mighty _Josephus_, all complete with plans and plates--over which on
Sundays my grandfather was wont to compose himself augustly to sleep.

Well, Miss Irma and Sir Louis came to my grandmother's house at
Heathknowes. Yes, this is the correct version. The house of Heathknowes
was Mary Lyon's. The mill in the wood, the farm, the hill
pastures--these might be my grandfather's, also the horses and wagons
generally, but his power--his "say" over anything, stopped at the
threshold of the house, of the byre of cows, at the step of the rumbling
little light cart in which he was privileged to drive my grandmother to
church and market. In these places and relations he became, instead of
the unquestioned master, only as one of ourselves, except that he was
neither cuffed nor threatened with "the stick in the corner." All the
same, this immunity did not do him much good, for many a sound
tongue-lashing did he receive for his sins and shortcomings--indeed, far
more so than all the rest of us. For with us, my grandmother had a short
and easy way.

"I have not time to be arguing with the likes of you!" she would cry.
And upon the word a sound cuff removed us out of her path, and before we
had stopped tingling Mary Lyon had plunged into the next object in hand,
satisfied that she had successfully wrestled with at least one problem.
But with grandfather it was different. He had to be convinced--if
possible, convicted--in any case overborne.

To accomplish this Mary Lyon would put forth all her powers, in spite of
her husband's smiles--or perhaps a good deal because of them. Upon her
excellent authority, he was stated to be the most irritating man betwixt
the Brigend of Dumfries and the Braes of Glenap.

"Oh, man,