"D'ye think that because I hae to put up wi' a great hulk like you, comin' hame at nicht smellin' o' cinders and lamp oil, that I'm gaun to leeve in a hut amang the coal waggons? Na, certes, gin ye want to hae Mirren Terregles to keep ye snug, ye maun e'en walk a mile or twa extra in the day. And it will be the better for keepin' doon that great muckle corporation o' yours!"
And that is the way that Muckle Alick Douglas lived out at Sandyknowes. It was to his small garden-girt house that he took the children.
"What's this ye hae fetched hame in your hand the nicht?" cried the little wife sharply, as she saw her husband come up the loaning. "It's no ilka wife that wad be pleased to hae a grown family brocht in on her like this!"
"Hoot, Mirren woman!" was all that Muckle Alick said, as he pushed Vara and Hugh in before him, Gavin nestling cosily in his arms the while.
"Whaur gat ye them, Alick?" said Mirren, going forward to look at the bairn in his arms. "They are bonny weans and no that ill put on."
Little Gavin was so content in the arms of Muckle Alick that he smiled. And his sweetness of expression struggling through the pinched look of hunger went right to the heart of Mirren, who, having no bairns of her own—"so far," as Muckle Alick remarked cautiously—had so much the more love for other people's. She turned on Vara, who stood looking on and smiling also. The little woman was almost fierce.
"What has been done to this bairn that he has never grown?" said Mirren Douglas, wife of Muckle Alick.
Vara flushed in her slow still way, at the imputation that she had not taken good care enough of her Gavin—to pleasure whom she would have given her life.
"I did the best I could," she said, "whiles we had to sleep oot a' nicht, an' whiles I had nae milk to gie him."