Grey hair, skilfully drawn lines on the forehead, and a plain gown, with cap, little shawl, and check apron, changed her into a comfortable, motherly creature who found favour the moment the curtain went up and discovered her rocking, darning, and crooning an old song.
In a short soliloquy about Sam, her boy, who wanted to enlist; Dolly, her discontented little daughter, who longed for city ease and pleasures; and poor 'Elizy', who had married badly, and came home to die, bequeathing her baby to her mother, lest its bad father should claim it, the little story was very simply opened, and made effective by the real boiling of the kettle on the crane, the ticking of a tall clock, and the appearance of a pair of blue worsted shoes which waved fitfully in the air to the soft babble of a baby's voice.

Those shapeless little shoes won the first applause; and Mr Laurie, forgetting elegance in satisfaction, whispered to his coadjutor: 'I thought the baby would fetch them!' 'If the dear thing won't squall in the wrong place, we are saved.

But it is risky.

Be ready to catch it if all Meg's cuddlings prove in vain,' answered Mrs Jo, adding, with a clutch at Mr Laurie's arm as a haggard face appeared at the window: 'Here's Demi! I hope no one will recognize him when he comes on as the son.

I'll never forgive you for not doing the villain yourself.' 'Can't run the thing and act too.