During my stay I was visited by Mr. Hare.  I had to face up to the people I had written to with no idea of any personal communication, and I must confess that I felt I must talk well to retain their good opinion.  I promised to pay a visit to the Hares when I came to London for the season.  He was a widower with eight children, whom he had educated with the help of a governess, but he was the main factor in their training.  The two eldest daughters were married—­Mrs. Andrews, the eldest, had helped him in his calculations for his great book on “Representation.”  His second daughter was artistic, and was married to John Westlake, an eminent lawyer, great in international law, a pupil of Colenso, who was then in London, and who was the best-abused man in the church.  Another visitor was George Cowan, a great friend of my late brother-in-law, Mr. W. J. Wren, who wrote to him till his death, when the pen was taken up by my sister Mary till her death, and then I corresponded with him till his death.  He came to London a raw Scotch lad. and met Mr. Wren at the Whittington Club.  Both loved books and poetry, and both were struggling to improve themselves on small salaries.  George Cowan had been entrusted with the printed slips of “Uphill Work,” and had tried it at two publishers without success.  I had to delay any operations till I returned to London, and promised to visit the Cowans there.

CHAPTER VII.

MELROSE REVISITED.

Jack Bakewell and Edward Lancelot Stirling went to see me off by the night train to Dunbar Station, five miles from Thornton-Loch, and I got there in time for breakfast.  The old house was just the same except for an oriel window in the drawing room looking out on the North Sea. and the rocks which lay between it and Colhandy path (where my great-grandfather Spence had preached and his wife had preferred Wesley), and Chirnside, or Spence’s Mains in the same direction.  All the beautiful gardens, the farm village, where about 80 souls lived, the fields and bridges were just as I remembered them.  My aunt Margaret was no longer the vigorous business-like woman whom I recollected riding or driving in her little gig an over the farm of 800 English acres which my great-grandfather had rented since 1811.  Not the Miss Thompson whom I had introduced into “Uphill Work.”  She had had a severe stroke of paralysis, and was a prisoner to the house, only being lifted from her bed to be dressed, and to sit in a wheeled chair and be taken round the garden on fine days.  The vigorous intellect was somewhat clouded, and the power of speech also; but she retained her memory.  She was always at work with her needle (for her hands were not affected) for the London children, grandnieces, and nephews who called her grandmamma, for she had had the care of their Parents during 11 years of her brother Alexander’s widowhood.  But Aunt Margaret could play a capital game of whist—­long whist.  I could see