d looked forward with such
fear and pain, for which all Dr. Millar's fortitude and all his wife's
meekness had been wanted to enable them to bear it with tolerable
calmness. It was only Annie and Rose doing what every young man, with
few exceptions, has to do. It was only their going away to work out
their bents in London. They had often gone from home and followed
various impulses and promptings before. But this was different. All who
were left behind had a sure intuition that this was the beginning of the
end, the sifting and scattering which every large family must undergo if
their time is to be long on earth. Annie and Rose might often come back
on visits. Rose might even set up a studio in Redcross and work there,
but it would not be the same. She would be an independent member of
society, with her own interests to think of--however faithfully and
affectionately she might still be concerned for the interests of
others--and her individual career to follow. Her separate existence
would no longer be merged in that of a band of sisters; it would stand
out clearly and distinctly far apart from the old state of tutelage and
subserviency of each unit to the mass. The lament of the tender old
Scotch song over the departing bride applied equally to Annie and Rose,
though there were no gallant "Jamies" to accuse of taking them "awa',
awa'." In the same manner it was not so much over the cause of their
going that Dora and May lamented, or the father and mother's hearts were
sorrowful, as

"Just that they'd aye be awa', awa'."

One day as May was coming back from school she met Tom Robinson, and he
stopped her to ask how the family were, and to tell her something. There
had always been less restraint in his and May's greetings than there had
been in those of the others since his dismissal as a suitor. There was
something in May's mingled studiousness and simplicity, and in the
strong dash of the child in her, which dissipated his shyness and
tickled his fancy. If matters had turned out otherwise than they had
done, he told himself vaguely, he and "little May" would have been a
pair of friends. He had no sister, and she had no brother, and he would
have liked to play the brother to this most artless of learned ladies.
"Look here, Miss May," he said, after the usual formulas, while he
turned and walked a few paces by her side, "do you remember the
fox-terrier puppy I was to have got for you and your sister Rose, in the
spr