"She was a prettier baby," Mrs. MacDougall answered, looking from one to the other, and putting her hand on Robbie's fair curls, almost as if she were doing him an injustice to say it. "Yes, I think every one would say Elsie was the bonnier baby. Robbie was but a puling, pasty-faced little thing, thin and miserable, not a crowing, bright little thing like the others. He wanted a deal o' care, did Robbie, an' I will say he's had it always."
"That he has, that he has," the old grandmother assented, warmly. "His poor——"
"Father wouldn't know him if he was to see him now," said Mrs. MacDougall, finishing her old mother's sentence.
For Duncan this little commonplace conversation had much more interest than those who were speaking could have any idea of. It puzzled him sorely too, for it seemed to tell such a different tale from the one Elsie had put together. He was watching Elsie closely, wondering what she could say to it. It was not so much what she had said that made Duncan uncomfortable as the way she said it. "Just as if she was our mother!" he thought to himself. "And then the letter said 'weak and delicate,' an' after all we was stronger babies than Robbie—leastways, Elsie was, and father used to be so proud of her. Elsie must have made a mistake. I feel quite sure she has."
Perhaps Elsie guessed what he was thinking, for the first moment they were alone she whispered to Duncan, "I can see through it," in a tone of so much confidence that Duncan was unsettled again. "D'you think I can't see through that?" Elsie said, contemptuously. "She talks like that o' purpose to misguide us an' every one else that comes near. She makes believe she's our mother always, even to granny, who knows she isn't, for fear anybody should get thinkin' about it. Besides, I doubt not we grew strong after a bit, maybe; an' if we ain't the babies, I'd like to know where they are."
"P'raps they was fetched away again after a bit."
"You've always got an answer ready, for all you look so stupid," Elsie said, crossly. "When did they go away, I'd like to know? Can you remember? I can't; an' I can call to mind as long ago as when Robbie was the baby, an father died."
To this Duncan could certainly find no reply. He himself had not the faintest recollection of any other babies than Robbie, and of course Elsie could remember better than he. He could not prove Elsie wrong, and yet he could not bring himself to realise that such a strange thing had been going on all these years in such a quiet, unnoticeable way—that Mrs. MacDougall could seem so exactly like a mother to them, and yet not be one. He was in a state of bewilderment, in which he could neither believe nor disbelieve, and so he went to sleep with a weary sigh, and left the mystery to unravel itself.
Not so Elsie. Her thoughts were very busy as she lay awake in her little room. At last a happy idea seemed to strike her. "Yes, that'll be the very time," she said softly to herself, and then settled herself to sleep.