Three generations

no BREAD-WINNER AND HOUSE-MOTHER
planting of the couple was a somewhat sore experience,
and to the end of their days the little town where they
had spent much of their youth and married life con-
tinued to have a foremost place in their estimation.
At Grange anything like equality of companionship
was at an end for a period of years till the transplanted
family took root, and had time to accommodate them-
selves to new soil. Indeed, visiting for my father and
mother came nearly to an end, since it presented so
many difficulties, and as the destination was farm-
houses with which Balass in its time might have been
called progressive and adventurous.
The exceptions were when my father mounted his
riding horse, which carried him over the fifteen miles
that divided him from his old interests and friends.
But such visits could only be an occasional indulgence
on the plea of business in the bank with which he had
been accustomed to deal, and in the offices of the
lawyers, to whom he now became sometimes a client.
My mother, too, traversed the ground, though not
oftener than once a year, occasionally not in two
years, when she paid periodical descents on her only
remaining brother and her sister Marget, John
Walker's widow, left in affluent circumstances,
staying on with her eight daughters at Blebo Mills
for some time after her husband's death, eventually
removing to a house in Cupar.
The mode of my mother's paying these eight or ten
days' visits was homely in the extreme. After the
putting down of the high, narrow gig, which was
rendered positively dangerous by the bad farm road,
my mother was under the necessity of falling back
cheerfully on one of the corn-carts, in which a cart-
horse was yoked, and was driven by a ploughman