Ann nodded. "So he was, always. Though he was so turbulent and noisy he was so uncunning you couldn't but think nobly of the soul. Mark and I thought of the mischievous things to do, and Robbie threw himself into them so whole-heartedly that generally he was the one caught and blamed. The rest of us were better at wriggling out of things. Father was never hard on us unless we cheated or told lies. He wasn't even angry when the policeman complained of us—do you remember the one, an elder in our church, who said in despair to his wife, 'I'll hae to jail thae bairns and leave the kirk'? One of the few times I ever saw Father really angry was when he was holding a class for young communicants, and we crept into the cubby-hole under the stairs, where the meter was, and turned off the gas. Father emerged from the study like a lion, and caught poor Jim, who had loitered. The rest of us had gained the attics and were in hiding. It must have been a great day for the young communicants."
"Ann! It was a shocking thing to do; it would have roused the mildest-mannered man."
"Father was very good-natured," said Ann, kneeling on the rug to put a log on the fire; "but it was never safe to presume too much on his mildness. He was subject to sudden and incomprehensible rages. One day I innocently remarked that somebody had a 'polly' arm. I didn't know that I meant a paralysed arm; I was only repeating what I had heard others say, but Father grabbed me suddenly and said, 'You wretched child! Where do you pick up those abominable expressions? Go to the nursery.' I went weeping, feeling bitterly the injustice with which I had been treated. But for every once that Father made us cry, a hundred times he filled our mouths with laughter. All our best games were invented by him. Whenever he put his head round the nursery door, we knew we were going to have good times. There was a glorious game about India, in which the nursery became a trackless jungle, and Father was an elephant with a pair of bellows for a trunk. Sometimes on a Sunday night, as a great treat, we were allowed to play Bible games. Then we would march round and round the nursery table, blowing lustily on trumpets to cause the walls of Jericho to fall, or Robbie as Jeremiah would be let down by Mark and me into the pit (which was the back of the old sofa), with 'clouts under his armpits'; or, again, he and Mark lay prostrate on the sofa (now the flat roof of an Eastern house), while I, as Rahab, covered them with flax. I have the nicest recollections of winter evenings in the study, with the red curtains drawn, and you sitting mending, when we lay on the hearth-rug, and Father read to us of Bruce, and Wallace, and that lonely, lovely lady, Mary of Scotland; but my most cherished memory is of a December day in Glasgow. It was a yellow fog that seemed to press down on us and choke us. You were out when we came in from our walk, the fire wasn't good, and everything seemed unspeakably dreary. We were quarrelling among ourselves and feeling altogether wretched, when the door opened and Father looked in on us. 'Alone, folkies?' he said. 'Where's your mother?' We told him you were out and that we had nothing to do, and that everything was beastly. He laughed and went away, and came back presently with a book. It was The Queen's Wake, and for the first time we heard of 'bonnie Kilmeny' who went away to Fairyland. We forgot the fog, we forgot our grievances; we were carried away with Kilmeny. Then Father got a ballad-book, and that was even better, for the clash of armies was ever music in our ears. We sprawled over him in our excitement as he read how 'in the gryming of a new-fa'en snaw' Jamie Telfer of the fair Dodhead carried the 'fraye' to Branksome ha'. Our tea was brought in, but the pile of bread-and-butter was hardly diminished, for Father read on, sometimes laughing aloud in his delight at what he read, sometimes stopping for a moment to drink some tea, but his eyes never leaving the printed page. How could we eat when we were hearing for the first time of Johnnie Armstrong going out to meet his King in all good faith, only to find that death was to be his portion? We howled like angry wolves when Father read:
'To seek het water beneath cauld ice,
Surely it is a great folie—
I have asked grace at a graceless face,
But there is nane for my men and me.'
When you came in, we only looked at you vaguely, and said, 'Go on, Father, go on,' and he explained, These benighted children have never heard the Border Ballad', Nell,' and then you sat down and listened too.... D'you remember people in Glasgow, who owned big restaurants all over the place—Webster, I think, was the name, and there was a fat only son who sometimes came in to play with us? I don't know what Mr. Webster was like in his home life, but that fat boy said to me very feelingly, 'Yours is a jolly kind of father to have.' It was generous of him, for only that morning he had taunted me with the fact that my father played a penny whistle, and I, deeply affronted, had replied with a tasteful reference to the restaurants, 'Well, anyway, he doesn't sell tuppenny pies like your father does.'"
"Oh, that penny whistle!" said Mrs. Douglas, with a laugh and a sigh. "He made wonderful music on it. There was always something of the Pied Piper about your father. Down in the district the children used to come up and pull at his coat and look up in his face; they had no fear of him; and whenever he entered the hall on Band of Hope nights the place was in an uproar with yells for a story. He would get up on the little platform and, leaning over the table, he would tell them 'Jock and his Mother,' or 'The Bannock that went to see the World,' or 'Maya'—fine stories, but not a moral to one of them."
"That was the best of Father's stories: they never had morals," said Ann. "The real secret of his charm was that at heart he was as much a child as any of them. Once I was down in the district with him, and we saw a very dirty little boy sitting on a doorstep. He greeted Father with a wide grin, and beckoned to him with a grimy forefinger. Father went obediently, and very slowly and mysteriously the little fellow drew from his ragged pocket a handful of marbles (very chipped and dirty ones) and said, 'Thae's whit ye ca' bool,' and Father, bending over the small figure, replied, 'So they are, sonny, so they are!'
"Yes, the fat boy was right: he was a jolly kind of father to have!"