“Yes, it will,” slowly returned MacRummle, whose ruddy face and smooth bald head seemed to glow with satisfaction now that he had got into dry garments. “Yes, I’m almost as fond of pie as my old friend Robinson used to be. He was so fond of it that, strange though it may seem to you, gentlemen, he had a curious predilection for pie-bald horses.”
“Come, now, Mac, don’t begin upon your friend Robinson till after dinner.”
“Has Archie’s photography turned out well?” asked Mabberly at this point. “I do a little in that way myself, and am interested as to the result of his efforts to-day.”
“We cannot know that before to-morrow, I fear,” replied Mrs Gordon.
“Did I hear you ask about Archie’s work, Mabberly?” said the laird, interrupting. “Oh! it’ll turn out well, I have no doubt. He does everything well. In fact, all the boys are smartish fellows; a little self-willed and noisy, perhaps, like all boys, but—”
A tremendous crash in the room above, which was the nursery, caused the laird to drop his knife and fork and quickly leave the room, with a look of anxiety, for he was a tender-hearted, excitable man; while his quiet and delicate-looking wife sat still, with a look of serenity not unmingled with humour.
“Something overturned, I suppose,” she remarked.
In a few minutes her husband returned with a bland smile.
“Yes,” he said, resuming his knife and fork; “it was Junkie, as usual, fighting with Flo for the black doll. No mischief would have followed, I daresay, but Archie and Eddie joined in the scrimmage, and between them they managed to upset the table. I found them wallowing in a sea of porridge and milk—that was all!”