"Oh, dreadful! Everything went wrong. Dr. Bentley told me that he didn't like a fire in his bedroom, but that he liked a fire in his bed. This, he explained very solemnly, meant two hot-water cans and six pairs of blankets. Marget put in one hot-water can (a 'pig' one) and had gone to fill an india-rubber one, when Ellie Robbie, wishful to help, and unaware of one 'pig' in the bed, slapped in another. They met, and each halved neatly in two. The bed was a sea, and we were looking despairingly at it when Dr. Bentley appeared in the doorway and announced that he would like to retire for the night! ... Some time afterwards Dr. Bentley was again in the neighbourhood and called, but found no one at home. Marget, telling us about his visit, said, 'It was thon auld man, I dinna mind his name; the yin the mistress is fear't for.'"
"With reason, I think," said Ann. "What an orgy of meetings you must have had that winter!"
"Yes, but I can't remember that there were any bad effects, or that we sank into indifference when the stimulus of the meetings was removed. Rather we went on resolved to do better than we had ever done, for the Lord had done great things for us.... Then came the call to Glasgow, and it was very difficult to decide what was for the best. We didn't love cities, and we had no friends in the West; on the other hand, we had to think about the education of you children. Your father was going on for forty, and he felt, if he ever meant to take a call, now was the time. You children were delighted. Any change seems a change for the better to a child; you never gave a thought to the big, sunny garden you were leaving, or the Den, or the familiar friendly house, or the kind people. The day your father and I went to Glasgow to look for a house you all stood on the doorstep and shouted after us, 'Be sure and get one near a coal-pit.'"
"Yes," Ann said; "the thought of a flitting enchanted us, and we began at once to pack. Where was it Robbie had inflammation of the lungs? Before we went to Glasgow, wasn't it?"
"The year before—in spring. He had got hot playing football and stood in the east wind. He was very ill, poor darling, and for long he needed great care. I got to know my wild boy in a different way in those days and nights of weakness."
Ann left her writing-table and sat on the fender-stool. She pushed the logs together and made them blaze, and, reaching over to the big basket that stood by the fireplace, she threw on log after log until the whole room was filled with the dancing light.
"Now, that's something like a fire," she said. "A dull fire makes one feel so despairing.... Robbie was so very proud of having had an illness; he always called it 'my inflammation,' and when he broke his arm his conceit knew no bounds. I'm afraid I broke it for him by falling off the seesaw on to the top of him. We didn't know what had happened, but we saw that his arm looked very queer, and Mark and I brought him home and helped him to take off his boots, and were quite unusually attentive to him. He didn't say a word about it hurting until he heard that it was broken, when he began to yell at once, and said, 'Will I die?—will I die?' Reassured on that point, he was very pleased about his broken arm."
"Two days later," said Robbie's mother, "he escaped from the nursery and was found on the rafters of an unfinished house (how he managed to climb with his arm in splints, I know not) singing 'I'm the King of the Castle.'"
Ann laughed softly. "He never let us forget his achievements, dear lamb. If we quarrelled about the possession of anything, Robbie was sure to say, 'Give it to me, for I've had the inflammation.' Mark made a poem about him, which ran:
'And if in any battle I come to any harm,
Why, I've had the inflammation, I've had a broken arm.'