where have _you_ been stravaiging to?" he would drawl; and if she
answered meekly, "I was taking a dander to the linn owre-bye," "The
Linn!" he would take her up; "ye had a heap to do to gang there; your
Bible would fit you better on a bonny Sabbath afternune!" Or it might
be: "What's that you're burying your nose in now?" and if she faltered,
"It's the Bible," "Hi!" he would laugh, "you're turning godly in your
auld age. Weel, I'm no saying but it's time."

"Where's Janet?" he demanded, stamping his boots once more, now he had
them laced.

"Eh?" said his wife vaguely, turning her eyes from the window.
"Wha-at?"

"Ye're not turning deaf, I hope. I was asking ye where Janet was."

"I sent her down to Scott's for a can o' milk," she answered him
wearily.

"No doubt ye had to send _her_," said he. "What ails the lamb that ye
couldna send _him_--eh?"

"Oh, she was about when I wanted the milk, and she volunteered to gang.
Man, it seems I never do a thing to please ye! What harm will it do her
to run for a drop milk?"

"Noan," he said gravely, "noan. And it's right, no doubt, that her
brother should still be abed--oh, it's right that he should get the
privilege--seeing he's the eldest!"

Mrs. Gourlay was what the Scotch call "browdened[1] on her boy." In
spite of her slack grasp on life--perhaps, because of it--she clung with
a tenacious fondness to him. He was all she had, for Janet was a
thowless[2] thing, too like her mother for her mother to like her. And
Gourlay had discovered that it was one way of getting at his wife to be
hard upon the thing she loved. In his desire to nag and annoy her he
adopted a manner of hardness and repression to his son--which became
permanent. He was always "down" on John; the more so because Janet was
his own favourite--perhaps, again, because her mother seemed to neglect
her. Janet was a very unlovely child, with a long, tallowy face and a
pimply brow, over which a stiff fringe of whitish hair came down almost
to her staring eyes, the eyes themselves being large, pale blue, and
saucer-like, with a great margin of unhealthy white. But Gourlay, though
he never petted her, had a silent satisfaction in his daughter. He took
her about with him in the gig, on Saturday afternoons, when he went to
buy cheese and grain at the outlying farms. And he fed her rabbits when
she had the fever. It was a curious sight to see the dour, silent man
mixing oatmeal and wet tea-leaves in a saucer at th