He put his hand gently on his sister's bowed golden head. Sandy had had just such gentle ways. Elizabeth caught his hand and held it to her face, and her tears fell on it.
"Oh! Lizbeth, are you giving way to sentiment? Just think how Fish would lawff!" and Alan patted her shoulder in an embarrassed way.
Elizabeth laughed through her tears.
"Imagine you remembering Fish all these years! We were very unsentimental children, weren't we? And do you remember how Sandy stopped kissing by law?"
They talked themselves back on to the level, and then Alan got up to go.
"Good-night, Lizbeth," he said, and then "Wee Lizbeth"; and his sister replied as she had done when they were little children cuddling down in their beds without a care in the world:
"Good-night, Alan. Wee Alan!"
The next morning he was off early to catch the London express.
It was a lovely springlike morning such as sometimes comes in mid-winter, and he stood on the doorstep and looked over the country-side. All the family, including Marget and Watty Laidlaw and his wife, stood around him. They were loth to let him go.
"When will you be back, my boy?" his father asked him.