Ardtaraig

years old, and can well. remember the sunny April evening when he presented himself, and I saw him for the first time. Papa and I had left the house for a walk, when suddenly, the figure of a man straddled right across our path. Papa looked indignant, and I fancied the stranger must be mad. In a moment papa’s face changed, and he held out both his hands, “Andrew!” he cried, and the two men greeted each other warmly. “This is your Uncle Andrew,” papa said to me, but I was bewildered and could hardly understand till we all went back to the house, papa calling out to prepare my mother, “‘Here is somebody we are bringing to see you!” It was quite an exciting evening, but after that he fell into our lives, and was for years a constant visitor. He was most lovable, a steady, able man, and a charming companion. He made friends readily, but lost them as easily, and his life was too full of changes to ensure success in anything. About six or seven years after his unexpected home-coming, he again went away, this time to settle in Manchester, coming occasionally to see us at lengthening intervals, and there he died in 1867. Uncle Andrew had a queer crotchet about marriage. He could not endure the thought of marrying a woman who had a fortune of her own, and though fond of the society of ladies, and even a bit of a flirt, kept clear of matrimony.
The remaining brother, John, so named, as was then frequent, after a deceased baby brother, I remember pretty well. He was, as I have said, my mother’s special pet, and much as if he had been her own child. As sometimes happens, in such cases, the real mother, then past her prime, was only too glad to allow this, her last infant, to be mothered and tended by an elder daughter, and it was easy to gather from mamma’s reminiscences, the hold which the child had of her affec¬tions. Johnnie’s beauties, his funny sayings, his childish wiles and ways, were all fondly treasured, and more often repeated than were those of her own offspring. The pet child who came nearest to him was Cousin Colin Brown, Aunt Brown’s eldest son. When my mother left her home in disfavour because she would not marry a man she did not care for, she went, as already recorded, to visit the Browns in Liverpool, and there the little Colin stepped into Johnnie’s vacant place. But the love for the little brother was never eclipsed. He grew up, the shortest and slightest of the brothers, with a well-featured, firm-set face, and a rather pallid complexion. Pictures of the first Napoleon have often recalled him to me. In course of time, he came to Glasgow to make his start in life, and was pretty nearly the contemporary of Aunt Brown’s sons (his nephews), already settled there. A very young and thoughtless uncle was he, while the nephews were firm as rocks, and very severe were the criticisms he received. Under these circumstances, it may be supposed that the announcement of his engagement to Miss Margaret Anne Fisher was hailed with general satisfaction by the family. What his pecuniary position was I do not know, nor is there anyone now living who could tell me. I was only five years old at the period of which I am writing, but I remember that he brought his wife home to quite a neat little house, in which I beheld gas in domestic use for the first time. Mamma continued longer than most to use oil lamps and candles, and gave them up somewhat reluctantly. Uncle John’s marriage was approved of on both sides, and everything seemed to promise well for the young couple. Miss Fisher’s father and mother, with their daughters; Margaret, Anne and Helen, lived in an old-fashioned house having a large garden with a high wall around it, on the banks of the Clyde, near Govan – a very different Clyde from the present, and an equally different Govan, but on this better pens than mine have discoursed (see, for example, Peter Mackenzie’s book on Old Glasgow). Well, this old house in those days stood in a pretty spot, quite near the river, with trees and grass all around it. Miss Fisher, my uncle’s fiancee, was not pretty; so pronounced my childish eyes and judgment, and I believe, small mite as I was, that they gave a true verdict. She seemed, however, to have brought the somewhat unsettled young man to his moorings, though, it was whispered, the task had not been quite an easy one. To this day I marvel that she succeeded, but as our old relative, who played his part in the very long ago (Dr Campbell, Dunoon), was wont to say, “There is nothing a wonderment in marriage.” Like Uncle John himself, she was of a pale complexion; her hair was of a jetty black¬ness, such as I seldom see in these days, but which was