‘It isn’t at all a bad sort of place, my dear,’ he said quite cheerfully.  ’At the back, in the yard, there’s a tree and a strip of grass.  In spring, if you like, you might put in a pennyworth of seeds, and have a flower.’

This was a tremendous concession.  Gladys felt grateful for the kindly thought which prompted it.

‘One tree, growing all by itself.  Poor thing, how lonely it must be!’

The old man looked at her curiously.

’That’s an odd way to look at it.  Who ever heard of a tree being lonely?  You have a great many queer fancies, but they won’t flourish here.  Glasgow is given up to business; it has no time for foolish fancies.’

Gladys gravely nodded.

‘Papa told me so.  Is it very far to Ayrshire, Uncle Abel?’

The old man gave a quick start.

’To Ayrshire!  What makes you ask the question?  What has put such a thing into your head?’

’Papa spoke of it so often, of that beautiful village where you and he were born.  He was so sorry I could not pronounce it right, Mauchline.’

As that sweet voice, with its pretty English accent, uttered the familiar name, again a strange thrill visited the old man’s withered heart.

’No, you don’t say it right.  But I wonder that he spoke of it so much; we were poor enough there, herd boys in the fields.  We couldn’t well have a humbler origin, eh?’

’But it was a beautiful life—­papa said so—­among the fields and trees, listening to the birds—­the same songs Burns used to hear.  I seem to know every step of the way, all the fields in Mossgiel, and every tree in the woods of Ballochmyle.  Just before he died, he tried to sing,—­oh, it was so painful to hear his dear, trembling voice,—­and it was “The Bonnie Lass o’ Ballochmyle.”  If it is not very far, will you take me one day, when you have time, Uncle Abel, to see Mauchline and Mossgiel and Ballochmyle?’

She looked at him fearlessly as she made her request, and her courage pleased him.

’We’ll see.  Perhaps at the Fair, when fares are cheap.  But it will only be to please you; I never want to see the place again.’

’Oh, is not that very strange, Uncle Abel, that papa and you should think of it so differently?  He loved it all so much, and he always said, when we were rich, we should come, he and I together, to Scotland.’

’He was glad enough to turn his back on it, anyhow.  If he had stayed in Glasgow, and attended to business, he might have been a rich man,’ said he incautiously.

‘You are not rich, though you have done so,’ said Gladys quickly, looking at him with her young, fearless eyes.  ’I think papa was better off than you, because he could always be in the country, and not here.’

The undisguised contempt on the girl’s face as she took in her surroundings rather nettled the old man, and he gave her a snappish answer, then picked himself up, and went off to his warehouse.