"Work!" says he; "why don't you work yourself ?" when I am at that wash-tub from morning till night.' 'And now poor Robin is adding to your trouble, Mrs.Bell,' I observed, with a pitying look at the child's white face and large wistful eyes.
'Ay, he has gone and done it now,' she returned, with a touch of motherly feeling; 'it was a slide those bad boys had made, and Robbie came down on it with his crutch under him.

He is always in trouble, is Robbie, has had more illnesses than all the children put together; there is nothing Robin can't take: whooping-cough,--why, he nearly whooped himself to death; measles and scarlet fever,--why, he was as nearly gone as possible, the doctor said.

He has always been puny and weakly from a baby.

But there's Bell, now, makes more of a fuss over Rob than over the others; if there is anything that will keep him away from the Man and Plough, it is Rob asking him to take him out somewhere.' 'Ay, father's promised to sit with me this evening,' observed Robin, in a faint little treble.
'Then we must make the room comfortable for father,' I said quickly.
'Mrs.Bell, I must not hinder you any more; but if you could spare one of the girls to help me tidy up a little.' 'Ay, Sally can come,' she returned; 'the place does look like a piggery.
You see, Tom and Ned and Willie sleep here along of Robin, and boys know naught about keeping a place tidy; Sally reds it up towards evening.

But there, doctor said Robbie must have a fire, and I've clean forgotten it: I will send up Sally with some sticks and a lump or two of coal.' Mrs.Bell was not a bad sort of woman, certainly, but, like many of her class, she was not a good manager; and when a woman has ten children, and a husband rather too fond of the Man and Plough, and is obliged to stand at her washing-tub for hours every day, one cannot expect to find the house in perfect order.
We had soon a bright little fire burning, which gave quite a cheery aspect to the large bare attic; the sloping roof and small window did not seem to matter so much.