'There will always be someone nigh, mother, to put them on again.'

'Ay, will there! Well I know it. Do you mind how when you were
but a bairn you used to say, "Wait till I'm a man, and you'll never
have a reason for greeting again?"'

I remembered.

'You used to come running into the house to say, "There's a proud
dame going down the Marywellbrae in a cloak that is black on one
side and white on the other; wait till I'm a man, and you'll have
one the very same." And when I lay on gey hard beds you said,
"When I'm a man you'll lie on feathers." You saw nothing bonny,
you never heard of my setting my heart on anything, but what you
flung up your head and cried, "Wait till I'm a man." You fair
shamed me before the neighbours, and yet I was windy, too. And now
it has all come true like a dream. I can call to mind not one
little thing I ettled for in my lusty days that hasna been put into
my hands in my auld age; I sit here useless, surrounded by the
gratification of all my wishes and all my ambitions, and at times
I'm near terrified, for it's as if God had mista'en me for some
other woman.'

'Your hopes and ambitions were so simple,' I would say, but she did
not like that. 'They werena that simple,' she would answer,
flushing.

I am reluctant to leave those happy days, but the end must be
faced, and as I write I seem to see my mother growing smaller and
her face more wistful, and still she lingers with us, as if God had