say what you have to say," she would cry, when reduced to
extremities by the obvious unfairness of his silent mode of controversy,
"but don't sit there girning like a self-satisfied monkey!"

"Mother!" exclaimed Aunt Jen, horrified. For she cherished a secret
tenderness for my grandfather, perhaps because their natures were so
different, "How can you speak so to our father?"

"Wait till you get a man of your ain, Janet," my grandmother would
retort, "then you will have new light as to how it is permitted for a
woman to speak."

With this retort Aunt Jen was well acquainted, and had to be thankful
that it was carried no further, as it often was in the case of any
criticisms as to the management of children. In this case Aunt Jen was
usually invited not to meddle, on the forcible plea that what a score of
old maids knew about rearing a family could be put into a nutshell
without risk of overcrowding.

The room at Heathknowes that was got ready for the children was the one
off the parlour--"down-the-house," as it was called. Here was a little
bed for Miss Irma, her washstand, a chest of drawers, a brush and comb
which Aunt Jen had "found," producing them from under her apron with an
exceedingly guilty air, while continuing to brush the floor with an air
of protest against the whole proceeding.

From the school-house my father sent a hanging bookcase--at least the
thing was done upon my suggestion. Agnes Anne carried it and Uncle Ebie
nailed it up. At any rate, it was got into place among us. The cot of
the child Louis had been arranged in the parlour itself, but at the
first glance Miss Irma turned pale, and I saw it would not do.

"I have always been accustomed to have him with me," she said; "it is
very kind of you to give us such nice rooms--but--would you mind letting
him sleep where I can see him?"

It was Aunt Jen who did the moving without a word, and that, too, with
the severe lines of disapproval very nearly completely ruled off her
face. It was, in fact, better that they should be together. For while
the parlour looked by two small-paned windows across the wide courtyard,
the single casement of the little bedroom opened on the orchard corner
which my grandfather had planted in the first years of his taking
possession.

The house of Heathknowes was of the usual type of large Galloway farm--a
place with some history, the house ancient and roomy, the office houses
built massively in a square, as much for d