"Oh yes; when Jim was a baby we went to London for a fortnight to stay with an uncle and aunt of your father's. Don't you remember them? Uncle John and Aunt John, we always called them—why, I don't know. Uncle John was rather old when he married, and had a weak heart, and Aunt John warned me that it was safer not to contradict him. Not that it would have entered into my head to do such a thing. I was in too great awe of them both. They were a handsome couple, and Uncle John had a pair of trousers for every day of the week—shepherd-tartan ones for Sunday. Aunt was very tall, with a Roman nose, her hair parted at one side, and was always richly dressed in silks that rustled.
"They were devoted to each other, and made such a touching pair of middle-aged lovers, coquetting with each other in a way that amazed us, staid married people that we were—I suppose I was about five-and-twenty then. I overheard Aunt say to Uncle one day when she came in with a new hat: 'How do you like my chapeau, Jackie?' and always at breakfast she greeted him with a resounding kiss, as if she had never set eyes on him from the night before. We must have been a great nuisance to them, such a countrified couple as we were. Your father was always fit to go anywhere, but I must have been a quaint figure, in a lavender dress trimmed with ruching, and a black silk dolman and a lavender bonnet. They were the efforts of the little dressmaker in Kirkcaple, one of our church members, and we had thought them almost alarmingly smart in the parlour behind the shop; but when I saw myself reflected in long mirrors and shop windows, I had my doubts."
Ann sat forward in her chair, her eyes alight with interest.
"I had forgotten about the London visit. Had you a good time? Were they kind to you?"
"They were kindness itself. Every morning Uncle planned out things for us to do, and arranged that we should lunch somewhere with him—that was to save our pockets. And Aunt's housekeeping seemed to me on a scale nothing short of magnificent. When I went marketing with her it thrilled me to see her buy salmon and turbot as I might have bought 'penny haddies,' and she seemed to me to give a dinner-party every night. And the servants were such aloof, superior creatures. It was all very awe-inspiring to me, a timorous little country mouse."
Ann laughed. "'Wee modest crimson-tippit beastie,' as Charlotte renders Burns. But tell me what you saw, Mother. All the sights, I am sure. But did you do anything exciting?"
"Oh yes. We went to hear Spurgeon, and one evening Uncle took us to the Crystal Palace and we saw fireworks."
Ann hooted. "Mother, you are a pet! I asked you if you had done anything exciting—meaning had you seen Ellen Terry and Irving and heard Patti sing—and you tell me you heard Spurgeon and went to fireworks at the Crystal Palace!"
"I don't see why you should laugh," Mrs. Douglas said, rather affronted. "These were the things we liked to do. At least, I think what your father really liked best was to poke about in the old book-shops, and he did enjoy the good food. I liked it all, but the going home was best of all. I had felt very small and shabby in London, but when we came off that long night journey and found you all waiting for us as fresh as the morning, you and Mark and Robbie and Jim, I felt the richest woman in the world. I quite sympathised with the mother of the Gracchi, though before I had always thought her rather a fool."
"Yes," Ann said profoundly. "Sometimes things you have read and thought merely silly suddenly become true—and did the London fortnight last you a long time?"