"No," laughed Ann. "He is very proud of being able to fend for himself, and hopes to die without being beholden to any woman. He was telling me a sad tale the other day about an old friend of his who lived alone until he was eighty, and then fell ill and had to have the district nurse, who insisted on his remaining in bed. 'To think,' said Geordie, 'that a man should live to be aichty and be overpowered by a wumman in the end.' But I can quite see that the lack of people to comfort and help is a great lack to you--born minister's wife that you are."
"Ah, well, I made many mistakes, but my heart was in my job. It was a real pleasure to me to know every soul in the church, and to listen to all they cared to tell me of their trials and their troubles, and to be asked to share in their merrymakings; to have the right to laugh and cry with them. The wives used to say when your father intimated visiting, 'I wish the mistress wad come wi' the minister, she's a graund cracker.' Your father was sometimes ill-off knowing what to talk about in the different houses; he wasn't one of those glib men with a fund of easy phrases, but when they got to know him they liked him the better for his quietness, and valued his few words more than other people's eloquence. How he would have enjoyed this, Ann! He loved the Green Glen, and the burn, and the whaups crying."
There was a silence, and Mrs. Douglas sat looking into the fire. She was far away from the little house among the hills. She was young again, and the husband of her youth was once more at her side. Pictures, softened and beautified by time, unrolled themselves before her eyes. Children played in a garden among flowers, their laughter and shouting came to her ears, she could see their faces lifted to hers; but no beckoning could bring them to her, for long ago they had grown up and gone away; they were but dream children who played in that garden.
Ann watched her mother with a soft look in her grey eyes. "I've been thinking, Mums, you ought to write your _Life_."
Mrs. Douglas came back to the present with an effort. "Write my life? But I did--don't you remember? On that yachting cruise we went, when the sea never stayed calm except for a few hours. There was nothing much to do, so I wrote my life in a twopenny pass-book, with a pencil, and none of you were at all encouraging about it. I read it aloud to you somewhere about the Azores, when you were lying seasick in your berth, and you said it made you feel worse; and Charlotte cried from the next cabin, 'Ann, what is wrong with Gran that she is making that curious, whining sound?' and Mark printed on the cover, 'The Life of auld Mistress Douglas written by herself,' and then it got lost."