. . .

David Robb is the weaver of Pettybaw. All day long he sits at his
old-fashioned hand-loom, which, like the fruit of his toil and the dear
old greybeard himself, belongs to a day that is past and gone.

He might have work enough to keep an apprentice busy, but where would
he find a lad sufficiently behind the times to learn a humble trade now
banished to the limbo of superseded, almost forgotten things?

His home is but a poor place, but the rough room in which he works is
big enough to hold a deal of sweet content. It is cheery enough, too,
to attract the Pettybaw weans, who steal in on wet days and sit on the
floor playing with the thrums, or with bits of coloured ravellings.
Sometimes when they have proved themselves wise and prudent little
virgins, they are even allowed to touch the hanks of pink and yellow and
blue yarn that lie in rainbow-hued confusion on the long deal table.

All this time the 'heddles' go up and down, up and down, with their
ceaseless clatter, and David throws the shuttle back and forth as he
weaves his old-fashioned winceys.

We have grown to be good friends, David and I, and I have been permitted
the signal honour of painting him at his work.

The loom stands by an eastern window, and the rare Pettybaw sunshine
filters through the branches of a tree, shines upon the dusty
window-panes, and throws a halo round David's head that he well deserves
and little suspects. In my foreground sit Meg and Jean and Elspeth
playing with thrums and wearing the fruit of David's loom in their
gingham frocks. David himself sits on his wooden bench behind the maze
of cords that form the 'loom harness.'

The snows of seventy winters powder his hair and beard. His spectacles
are often pushed back on his kindly brow, but no glass could wholly
obscure the clear integrity and steadfast purity of his eyes; and as
for his smile, I have not the art to paint that! It holds in solution so
many sweet though humble virtues of patience, temperance, self-denial,
honest endeavour, that my brush falters in the attempt to fix the
radiant whole upon the canvas. Fashions come and go, modern improvements
transform the arts and trades, manual skill gives way to the cunning of
the machine, but old David Robb, after more than fifty years of toil,
still sits at his hand-loom and weaves his winceys for the Pettybaw
bairnies.

David has small book-learning, so he tells me; and indeed he had need to
tell me, for I