Now the Bruces were not good children, as was natural; and they despised Annie because she was a girl, and because she had no self-assertion.

If she had shown herself aggressively disagreeable, they would have made some attempt to conciliate her; but as it was, she became at once the object of a succession of spiteful annoyances, varying in intensity with the fluctuating invention of the two boys.

At one time they satisfied themselves with making grimaces of as insulting a character as they could produce; at another they rose to the rubbing of her face with dirt, or the tripping up of her heels.
Their persecution bewildered her, and the resulting stupefaction was a kind of support to her for a time; but at last she could endure it no longer, being really hurt by a fall, and ran crying into the shop, where she sobbed out, "Please, sir, they winna lat me be." "Dinna come into the chop wi' yer stories.

Mak' it up amo' yersels." "But they winna mak' it up." Robert Bruce rose indignant at such an interruption of his high calling, and went out with the assumption of much parental grandeur.

He was instantly greeted with a torrent of assurances that Annie had fallen, and then laid the blame upon them; whereupon he turned sternly to her, and said-- "Annie, gin ye tell lees, ye'll go to hell." But paternal partiality did not prevent him from reading them also a lesson, though of a quite different tone.
"Mind, boys," he said, in a condescending whine, "that poor Annie has neither father nor mither; an' ye maun be kind till her." He then turned and left them for the more important concerns within-doors; and the persecution recommenced, though in a somewhat mitigated form.