er for Belle when
the snow came, but she had no pleasure out of them during the vacation.

"I'm going to drive downtown, mother," I heard her say one morning.
"Would you like to go?"

"Is Mary gaun?"

"I thought of taking her."

"Then I'll no' gang. I wadna like to crood Mary."

"Dear mother, there's plenty of room."

"Ay, ay, but ye ken Mary doesna like tae sit wi' her back tae the
horse."

That sort of thing was always happening. One day the old lady came home
from a round of visits, much perturbed in mind and body. The sandy hair
I inherited, and have largely lost, does not show the gray with which it
is mixed, and so light and wiry is she one finds it difficult to
remember my mother's seventy years. She is a small woman, but her
personality is sufficiently large for the ripples to be felt throughout
the household when its surface is disturbed.

"What dae ye think I've been hearin'?" she cried, finding me alone in
the nursery on the sofa, and helpless in her hands.

"I can't imagine, mother. You generally have something spicy to tell us
after you've been calling on the MacTavishes."

"Dae ye ken 'at yon hizzy ye've ta'en intill yer hoose ca's hersel' Mary
_Gemmell_?"

"Oh, well, what's in a name?"

"I wonner tae hear ye, Davvit! What wad yer faither hae thocht aboot it,
or yer gran'faither? Gie'n the femly name, that's come doon unspotted
frae ae generation till anither, tae a funnlin' aff the streets! Ou, ay!
I micht 'a' kent what wad happen when I h'ard tell o' ye bein' merrit
till an Amerrican."

"Hold up there, mother. You're just twenty years too late in raking up
that story. If it suits me and Belle to have that girl called 'Mary
Gemmell,' Mary Gemmell she shall be, if it turns all Scotland head over
heels into the North Sea."

So seldom do I break out that an eruption of mine never fails to clear
the air of an unwelcome topic.

Our boys have grown up on a sort of an "every-man-for himself"
principle, and when it came to a fight for the favorite corner of the
sofa, the favorite game, or picture-book, "Mamie" was in the thick of it
every time.

"What else can you expect?" said I to Belle, consolingly. "She's been
fighting the world on her own account ever since she can remember, and
our house represents to her only a change of battle ground."

"I think her father must have been a gentleman."

"He certainly had one gentlemanly peculiarity."

"Don't be a brute, Dave. I mean that Mary's an