Three generations

CHAPTER VIII
We started school-keeping in an unpretentious little
flat above a druggist's shop, taking only day-pupils.
Then we had two better flats in adjoining houses, with
a door broken open between the flats to enable my
sister Mary, already very much of an invalid, to escape
the fatigue of the stairs, and the necessity of facing the
open air of the street. When our position was fairly
established, and we began to have boarders, we settled
in an old house which had been the town-house of
Lord Balmerino. He was, with Lord Kilmarnock and
Lord Lovat, among the last sufferers who were be-
headed on Tower Hill in the Jacobite Rebellion of '45.
It was he who, on driving back after he had received
his sentence, begged that the coach might be stopped
in order that he might buy a pennyworth of " honey-
blobs," perhaps in remembrance of his gooseberries in
the garden of his great house by the Tay, or in that
Cupar house-garden we knew so well. His was an
interesting house, in spite of a large modern addition.
Among its relics of the past was one fine corridor and
a dainty little drawing-room with panels painted white.
There was a large pleasant garden extending to the
small River Eden, and opening on the " Water Ends,"
an ancient promenade of the townspeople, bounded
on one side by the " Cart Haugh," the town's spacious
washing-green, with its one venerable tree of local
renown.
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