Chapter VI: Part 6

"I'm no gaun to keep company wi' ony man that gangs on the nicht shift!" cried Sal, turning with the needles in her hand and stamping her foot. "I'll let ye ken that Sal Mackay thinks mair o' hersel' than that. I hae some pride!"

The murder was out. But poor James, who thought that he had done a fine thing in attaining promotion, knew not what to reply.

"And what differ does that make, Sal?" asked Cleaver's boy in astonishment.

"What differ does it make? Hear to the cuddy! Differ—juist this differ, that ye'll walk oot wi' some dafter lass than Sal Mackay. I hae mair respect for mysel' than to bemean mysel' to gang wi' a nicht-shift man!"

"But," said James, "I get far better pay. Think o' that, Sal!"

"I'm no carin' for that, when I canna be there when ye spend it," said the mercenary Sal, with, however, commendable straightforwardness.

"But I fetched ye the brandy-balls, Sal," persisted the once proud boy of Cleaver's.

"Brandy-balls! _That_ for your brandy-balls!" cried Sal, pointing to the fireplace, in which a little blue flame was still burning, at the spot where the Tam Luke's sweetmeats had been so irregularly consumed. "D'ye think that Sal Mackay is to be dependent every nicht on a chap that has to gang on duty at half-past seven?——"

"Eight o'clock!" said Cleaver's boy, eagerly.

"At half-past seven," said Sal, jerking her head pugnaciously at each syllable, "he pits on claes that are a disgrace to be seen forbye smelled. And what's to come o' the lemonades noo, I wad like to ken—or o' the gallery at the theaytre?"

"There's Saturday afternoon, Sal," said James placably, with a sudden access of cheerfulness. He had scored a point.

"Aye, there's Saturday afternune," replied Sal, with chilling cynicism, "and what will ye do with your Saturday afternoon? Ye'll maybe tak' me ower to Aberdour again in the boat, and be sae dazed and sleepy-like that ye'll faa asleep on the road, as ye did the last time. And hae everybody sayin', 'My word, Sal, but ye hae a blythe young chap there. Ye maun hae been fine heartsome company to him?' D'ye think ony lass that thinks onything o' hersel' wad stand the like o' that?"

Sal stamped her foot and paused for a reply. It was certainly an awkward question. Sal, like most women (thought James) was a demon at "casting-up" when she began.

Cleaver's boy scratched his curly head and advanced towards Sal. He felt that in the war of words he was going to have very distinctly the worst of it. But he thought that he might fare better nearer at hand. It was one of his favourite axioms that "it is aye best to argue wi' the weemen at close grips." Which, whether it be true or not, at least shows that Cleaver's boy was a youth of some experience—but Sal Mackay chose to misinterpret his action.

She turned instantly, and, snatching up an iron goblet of hot water which stood on the hearth, she advanced to meet him, crying, "I'll gie ye your fill o' throwin' water on decent folk. An' this water will keep ye fine and warm on the nicht shift, my lad!"

At this Cleaver's boy turned and fled. But as he scudded down the stairs, bent nearly double, the boiling water from Sal Mackay's pan fell in stinging drops upon the back of his neck, and, what was worse, upon his suit of new clothes, bought with his week's wages and donned for the first time.

When Cleaver's boy reached the pavement, he dusted the water splashes off as well as he could, and walked thoughtfully and determinedly across Nicholson Street.

"It'll be an awesome savin' in lemonade," he said, "an' that dreadfu' expensive bottle lemonade too!"

A tramcar was passing. A wild thought ran through his brain.

"Dod," he said, "I declare I'll save that muckle by giein' up Sal—I'll risk it."

And he hailed the car and walked very slowly towards it when it stopped. The conductor waved to him to come on.

"Could ye no hae run, man, an' no wasted a' this time?" he said, when Cleaver's boy had at last got himself upon the platform.

"I was gettin' my twopence-worth," said James Annan, with dignity; "I am an inside passenger!" And he went through the glass door and sat beside Bailie Holden, who was going home to dinner and was already thinking of Bogie roll.

The Bailie and Cleaver's boy got out at the same place. They made their way to the same house. The Bailie let himself in by the front door. Cleaver's boy went equally unannounced to the back. But Cleaver's boy knew that he had pretty Janet of Inverness waiting for him, whereas the Bailie only had his wife. And in these circumstances most people would have preferred to enter by the back door with James Annan.

Janet of Inverness was standing by the kitchen-window polishing a brass preserving pan in which she could admire her dimpled chin, and the hair which, curling naturally, did not need the intervention of red-hot knitting needles to be beautiful.

Janet ran hastily to the door.

"Do you want to see the maister?"

"No," said James Annan; "wull ye hae me, Janet?"

Janet of Inverness looked him a moment in the eyes. What she read there, Janet only knows. At any rate it seemed to be satisfactory enough, for, with all the ardour of love's young dream, she fell on his neck, and murmured, "Aye, Jamie, when—" (here Janet of Inverness sobbed)—"when ye get a rise!"

ADVENTURE XXIV.

THE CROOK IN THE LOT OF CLEAVER'S BOY.

I should have mentioned before that Inverness Janet's other name was Urquhart, but for the fact that second names do not seem to matter anywhere, except in those grades of society where persons require calling cards to remind them of each others' names.

It was only a natural precisian like Mr. Cleg Kelly who always insisted on the second name. But Cleg had a reason for that. He was himself in the curious position of having no ascertained first name. There was a tradition in the family that he had been baptized Bryan, but his mother had never used the name. And since his father and everyone else had always called him Cleg, Cleg Kelly he remained all his life—or at least, as they say commercially, "to date."

But it is with Inverness Janet and the faithless and easily consoled James Annan, late assistant to Mr. Cleaver, butcher, that we have presently to do. Janet's conditional acceptance of his devotion seemed in a fair way to being made absolute. For Cleaver's boy proved a success at the night work. But in spite of this, and of his apparently assured success, both in the fields of practical sanitation and in those of love, James Annan was clearly not happy.

Judging by some past experience of his own, Cleg thought he must be pining for his old freedom.

"What for do ye no rin away, if ye want to be rid o' Janet?" was Cleg's contribution to the problem.

"Haud your tongue! I dinna want to get rid o' Janet!" said Cleaver's boy, loyally, but without indignation. Such things had been, and might be again.

"It's aboot Janet onyway," said wise Cleg, shaking his head; "hae Sal or Susy been botherin' her?"

"Na," said Janet's lover, "they ken better. My certes, Janet wad gie them the door in their faces and then send for a polissman."

"Ye had better tell me, at ony rate," said Cleg.

And with a little pressing, James Annan did unburden his sore heart.

"Ye see," he said, "Janet's bonny—or I think sae——"

"It is the same thing exactly!" interjected Cleg.

"She's bonny, an' easy to be doin' wi'. She's no sair ava' in the way o' expense. She is a natural saver hersel', an' she's aye at me to be puttin' by the siller. O, in some ways it is juist like heeven—nae leemonades, nae swing rides, nae merry-go-rounds, nae shows! I declare she cares no a buckie for Pepper's Ghost. In that respect there's no a mair agreeabler lass in the toon. Janet is aye pleased to tak' a walk on the Calton, or maybe in the Gardens, or to the Museum, or doon the shore to Leith to see the ships, or, what pleases her best, juist doon to the Waverley Station to see the Heelant train come in. O, Cleg, she is sic a weel-dooin', couthy, kindly lass, that ony man micht hae been prood o' her."

"What is't, then," said Cleg, "since she's sae perfect? Is't the poetry?" To Cleg "the poetry" was a trouble which might seize a victim at any moment, like the toothache. "And then where are ye?" he would add, cogently.

But it was not the poetry. It was a deeper grief. It appeared from the tale which Cleg laboriously extracted from the reluctant and deeply wounded suitor, that Janet, though a well-doing lass in every respect, had one grave fault.

All day she was at work quietly and willingly. It was the nature of James's occupation that he should be in the neighbourhood in the early morning. At that hour Janet, in her working gown, was all that heart could desire. But when Cleaver's boy chanced to go round in the afternoon, or met Janet by appointment, some malicious pixie had wrought a sea-change in the lass of Inverness.

She would then tell, with the greatest candour and engaging innocence, tales which even a faithful lover could not otherwise characterise than as "whoppers." This mania appeared to come upon her whenever she had taken off her morning wrapper and put on her company dress. She was going (so she declared) to "the mistress" to ask for a few evenings off in order to fulfil her innumerable social engagements. Every house where at any time she had been engaged (as kitchen-maid) opened wide its doors to her as a welcome guest. She told the cook, who listened with unconcealed scorn, how she had been at balls and suppers galore in "the best houses" in Melville Street and Princes Street. She must really, she said, begin to remodel and refashion some of her many silks and satins for the approaching season.

Only the evening before, she had entertained the servants' hall at Bailie Holden's with an account of a dinner she had been at the night before in the Grange. She had even got off early in order to have her hair done by the hairdresser.

"The hairdresser, as a great favour, is going to arrange it in the latest style for five shillings, instead of ten-and-six, his usual charge," said Janet of Inverness, with a glance like an angel's for innocence. Then she described her drive to the house in a four-wheeler. "My hair would have got so blown about, or I should have gone in a hansom, which is much more distinguished." Her former master had, it appeared, come into the hall to receive her. Two gentlemen had almost quarrelled as to who should see her home. A handsome and distinguished gentleman and a member of Parliament for the city, celebrated for his gallantry to the ladies, had, however, forestalled them both, arranged the shawl deliciously about her shoulders with well-accustomed fingers, and had thereafter driven home with her in a hansom.

"It did not matter about the hair then, you know," said gay Janet of Inverness, looking daringly at Cleaver's boy.

At this the cook had laughed out loud. She then said that it was all lies, and that she had seen Janet walking along the Bridges with another girl at the supposed hour of the dinner. Thus was shame brought upon Cleaver's boy and upon the pride and good name of his sweetheart.

"An' what do ye think I should do, Cleg?" asked James Annan.

"I wad gie her a lickin' and gar her stop," said Cleg, who had still prehistoric notions as to the discipline of women.

"Na," said Cleaver's boy; "I hae thocht o' that. But, man, she's no like Susy or Sal. Ye couldna lift a hand to her when she looks at ye wi' yon e'en, an' tells ye that her faither was either a Highland Chief or a Toon Councillor o' Inverness. I couldna do it, Cleg."

"Hoot," said Cleg, "then I wad try no to heed. She may grow oot o't. An' thae Heelant folk are aye leein' onyway. Think on a' the lees they tell aboot their Bonny Prince Chairlie!"

"I hae tried no to mind," answered Cleaver's boy, sadly; "but when I see the ither yins a' laughin' at her an' her no seeing it, but gaun straight on wi' her daft-like story, I tell ye, Cleg, it pits me fair wild. There'll be murder dune, Cleg, gin it's no stoppit."

"Weel, Cleaver," said Cleg philosophically, "I think I see the reason on't. She disna gang to shows an' theaytres, to save the siller; but she says she gangs, an' that costs naething. I dinna see what ye hae to compleen o'!"

"If that's a' ye can tell me," said Cleaver's boy indignantly, "I wadna hae missed muckle if ye had stayed at hame."

"Hoots, butcher," said Cleg, with indulgence, "dinna gang a aff like the fuff o' a match. There's little sense and nae siller in that. But I'll tell ye what, butcher: I'll speak to Miss Celie. She will ken what ye had better do."

It was thus indirectly that Providence was appealed to in the Sooth Back.

ADVENTURE XXV.

A COMELY PROVIDENCE IN A NEW FROCK.

Cleg was as good as his word. He went that very night to call on Miss Tennant at Aurelia Villa. He found her in a philanthropic frame of mind. She had received from the dressmaker a dress of the latest mode, and she was conscious that the new fashion suited her like a garment fashioned by the fairies in a dream. Also (what was even better) that it would make other girls whose shoulders were not so good and whose figure was less slim and graceful, look perfectly hideous. Yet they would have to wear it. Celie felt that evening that there was little left to wish for in this sinful world. She looked out of the window toward the west. There was also (it seemed on purpose) a beautiful sunset which glorified the purple cliffs of Arthur's Seat—a quiet, providential sunset, for it went so well with the colour of her new dress. Besides, here was Mr. Donald Iverach walking slowly up the Avenue. And yet some people complained that this was not a good world! What would folk say next?

But Cleg forestalled the Junior Partner. He came by the back door, and when in a strait betwixt two, a serving maid will always answer a knock at the back before a ring at the front door. The back door is more variously interesting.

So Cleg had the floor of the house, and was just finishing his tale, when Mr. Donald Iverach was announced.

Celie held out her hand to him, with a motion which signified at once a welcome and a desire that he should not interrupt. So the Junior Partner, who had for some time been accustomed to devote more time to the study of her moods than he had ever done to his Bible (and he had not neglected that either when nobody saw him), sat down upon a sofa and became interested in the pattern of some crochet work, which Miss Celie had tossed on a chair with characteristic impetuosity when she had rushed across the room to greet Cleg.

"Are ye gaun to pit on that dress on Sabbath at the Sunday school?" asked Cleg, when he had time to think a little about his own affairs.

Celie looked at him with a small start of ingenuous wonder. It was a good little start in its way, and expressed amazement that anyone should notice so plain and simple a thing as her new dress. It is an undoubted fact that she was a truthful girl, and it is also a fact that she was quite aware how instantly the summer dress had riveted the attention of both Cleg and the Junior Partner. Yet the little start expressed as plainly as words her surprise, even her sorrow, that in the midst of so serious a world the minds of men and boys should dwell upon so vain a thing as a girl's gown. Perhaps Celie's little start was her way of telling stories. For the sage sayeth that all women tell stories habitually and unintentionally, whereas men tell them only occasionally but intentionally.

At any rate, whether it was the start or whether it was merely owing to her sympathetic nature, after a moment's consideration of the sad failing of Janet of Inverness, Celie lifted her eyes to those of the Junior Partner.

"Poor girl," she said, "I quite understand; don't you?"

"You see, I have not heard," said the Junior Partner, hesitating.

Celie instantly withdrew her eyes from his. She looked at once hurt and disappointed. He set up for being sympathetic and kind, and he had failed to understand a simple thing like this. He was clearly unworthy of confidence. Celie Tennant turned to Cleg for assistance. He was looking at her with wide eyes of boyish adoration. Cleg at any rate understood. She turned half round in her chair and the profile which she presented to Mr. Donald Iverach struck a chill through the room like that part of Greenland which looks towards the Pole. Celie's lovers did not lack varied interests in their life; and perhaps that was why she had so many. For in the affairs of the heart most men like good sport and a run for their money.

"Come, Cleg," she said, rising, "I want to speak to you. My father is in the garden, Mr. Iverach!" she added, pointedly.

What Mr. Iverach said under his breath of his excellent friend Mr. Robert Greg Tennant at that moment, it is perhaps better not to write down. He rose and went to the window. From the wide space of its oriel, he watched with furtive sidelong gloom the confabulation of Celie and Cleg. Celie was explaining something with great animation to the boy, who looked down and seemed a little doubtful. Then with inimitable archness, which seemed thrown away upon an Arab of the city (if it were intended for him), Celie explained the whole matter over again from the top of the steps. She went a little way back towards the house.

"Now you quite understand?" she cried with impressive emphasis. And lest he should not yet comprehend, she turned ere she reached the door, ran to Cleg at the gate with still more inimitable daintiness, and, with her hand upon his arm, she explained the whole thing all over again. The Junior Partner felt a little string tighten somewhere about the region in which (erroneously) he believed his heart to lie. He clenched his fist at the sight.

"O confound it!" he remarked, for no very obvious reason, as he turned away.

But Celie was full of the most complete unconsciousness. Yet (of course without knowing it) she quite spoilt the game of two young men, who were playing lawn tennis on the court of a neighbouring house. Their returns grew wilder and their services were beneath contempt. Their several partners (attractive young women whom the new style of dress did not suit) met casually at the net, and one of them remarked to the other, "Isn't she a minx? And her pretending to be good and all that!" Which was perhaps their way of clenching fists and saying, "Confound it!" Or worse.

Then in a little while Cleg went down the Avenue with a sense that the heavens had fallen, and that angels were getting quite common about the garden gates of the South Side. He carried the arm on which Celie had laid her hand a little apart from him. It was as blissfully sensitive as if he had been ten years older.

Celie stood a moment at the gate looking after him. She shaded her eyes from the sunset and looked down the long street. It is a charming pose when one is sure of one's arms and shoulders. At this moment one of the young men in the garden sent a ball over the house, and the eyes of his partner met those of the other girl. Peace was upon the earth at that sweet hour of sunset, but good-will to women was not in their two hearts. Celie felt that the light summer silk had already paid for itself.

"I don't believe a bit in religion—so there!" said the girl next door to her friend over the net.

At that moment Celie gave a little sigh to think that her first night in the new garment was so nearly over. "And father wanted to give me a black silk," said Celie Tennant to herself. Celie felt that she had not wasted her time nor her father's money.

So to show her gratitude she went and found her father. He was slowly walking up and down the little plot of garden, meditatively smoking his large evening pipe. He stopped now before a favourite row of cabbages, and now at the end of the strawberry bed. He regarded them equally with the same philosophical and meditative attention. He was a practical man and insisted on growing vegetables in his own private domains at the back, leaving his daughter to cultivate roses and the graces in the front garden.

Celie elevated her nose and sniffed as she came out. "O father, what a horrid smell of tobacco you are making!"

"It is almost inevitable," he said, apologetically; "you see it is tobacco I am smoking."

If it had been asafœtida, Celie could not have appeared more disgusted.

"I thought your young thieves smoked at that club of yours," said her father.

"Oh, yes; but that is different," she answered.

"Yes, it _is_ different," chuckled her parent, thinking of what his tobacco cost him.

Then Celie went on to explain all about Cleaver's boy and his trouble, telling the sad tale of the "failing" of Janet of Inverness, as, well—as I should like to have the tale of my weaknesses told, if it were necessary that they should be told at all.

Her father smoked and listened. Sometimes he lifted a snail from the leaf of a cabbage with care. Anon he kicked a stone sideways off the path, and ever he smoked, listened, and nodded without comment.

"These are all your orders, ma'am?" he asked slowly, when his daughter had finished.

"I'll pull your ears, father, now I will," said she, with equal want of connection.

And did it.

"Oh, I had forgotten Mr. Iverach!" she cried, running off towards the house with a little gesture of despair; "what shall I do?"

"Give him his orders, too!" her father called after her, as the last flutter of the new dress flashed through the twinkling poplars.

ADVENTURE XXVI.

R. S. V. P.

A great event happened in the back-kitchen of Bailie Holden. The postman had brought a letter with a fine monogram—a very stiff, square letter, for Miss Janet Urquhart. The table-maid, who considered herself quite as good as a governess, examined it as though there must needs be some mistake in the address. The housemaid turned it about and looked at it endways and upside down, to see if there might not be another name concealed somewhere. She rubbed it with her apron to see if the top would come off and something be revealed beneath. The cook, into whose hands the missive next passed, left a perfect tracing of her thumb and fore-finger upon it, done in oils, and very well executed, too.

In this condition it reached the back-kitchen at last, and the hands of Janet of Inverness. As she took the letter in her little damp fingers, she grew pale to the lips. What she feared, I cannot tell—probably only the coming true of some of her dreams.

In a cluster round the door stood the housemaid, the table-maid, and family cat—the one which went habitually on four legs, I mean. The cook moved indignantly about the range, clattering tongs, pans, and other instruments of music, as it is the immemorial use of all cooks when the bird in the breast does not sing sweetly. She was, of course, quite above curiosity as to what Janet's letter might contain.

"Likely it's an invitation!" sneered the housemaid.

"Aye, frae the police!" added the table-maid from the doorway. She was plain, and Cleaver's boy never stopped to gossip with her. Not that she cared or would have stood talking with the likes of him.

The cook banged the top of the range, like Tubal-cain when Naamah vexed him in that original stithy, near by the city of Enoch in the land of Nod.

Janet of Inverness opened the letter. Scarcely could she believe her eyes. It was a formal invitation upon a beautifully written card, and contained a wish on the part of Mr. Greg Tennant and Miss Tennant that Miss Janet Urquhart would favour them with her company at Aurelia Villa on the evening of Friday the 17th, at eight o'clock. R.S.V.P.

Janet sank into a seat speechless, still holding the invitation. The table-maid came and looked over her shoulder.

"Goodness me!" she exclaimed, as she read the card.

"She's been tellin' the truth after a'," said the housemaid, who, having some claims to beauty, was glad of Janet's good fortune, and hoped that the like might happen to herself.

"I dinna believe a word o't!" said the cook indignantly. "I'se warrant she wrote it hersel'!"

But Janet had not written it herself. She could not even bring herself to write the answer, though she had received a sound School Board education. But the three R's do not contemplate the answering of invitations upon thick cardboard, ending "R.S.V.P." They stop at the spelling of "trigonometry" and the solving of vulgar fractions.

In spite of her silks and satins and her vaunted experience, Janet did not know the meaning of "R.S.V.P." But the housemaid had not brushed clothes ten years for nothing.

"It means 'Reply shortly, very pleased'!" said she. Which, being substantially correct, settled the question.

Nevertheless, poor Janet was in great perturbation. When Cleaver's boy went to see her that evening before going on duty she showed him the card.

"What shall I do?" she said. "I hae nothing fit to wear, and I am feared to gang."

Cleaver's boy looked up at the ceiling of the back-kitchen, as he sat on the edge of the sink, unconscious that there was a tap running behind him and that the plug was in.

"There was that purple brocade ye telled me aboot, wi' the auld lace and the pearls that belonged to your grandmither, the Earl's dochter," said James Annan, meditatively.

"O aye," said Janet. "Yes, of course there is that ane." But she did not look happy.

"Or there is the plain white muslin wi' the crimson sash aboot the waist, that the twa gentlemen were for stickin' are anither aboot, yon nicht they quarrelled wha was to see ye hame."

"Aye," said Janet, piteously, "there's that ane too."

"An' what say ye," continued James Annan remorselessly, "to the yellow sattin, trimmed wi' flounces o' glory-pidgeon roses and——?"

Cleaver's boy suddenly stopped. He had been feeling for some time a growing coolness somewhere. But at this point the water in the sink ran over on the floor, and he turned round to discover that he had been sitting in a full trough of excellent Moorfoot water, with the spigot running briskly down his back all the while.

"O James," cried Janet, pleased to get a chance to change the subject, "what for did ye do that, James? And your new breeks, too!" she added, with an expression of supreme pain.

"I didna do it for naething," remarked Cleaver's boy, tartly. "I didna do it ava'. It was you that left the spigot rinnin and the plug in!" he added, after a thoughtful pause, while he realised how cool a sitz-bath can be, even on a summer evening, when one stands by an open window.

Now nothing is more provoking, when you are performing a high and noble work in the reformation of another person's morals, than to have the thread of your weighty discourse broken by something so ridiculous as sitting down in a bucket of water. There was every reason why Cleaver's boy should be annoyed.

But Janet broke out in a sobbing ecstacy of laughter, which irritated her lover more even than her wrong-doing.

"I wonder at you," he said, "telling a' thae lees when ye haena a dress to your back, forbye the alpaca that ye pit on on Sabbaths!"

It was a mistake, and Cleaver's boy knew it as soon as he had the words out of his mouth.

Janet instantly stopped in the midst of her laughter.

"I would have you know," she said with dignity, "that I shall accept the invitation. And I will never speak to you again. I'll thank you to take yourself out of my presence, James Annan!"

"And out of Bailie Holden's back-kitchen!" continued her lover, whose colour did not diminish with the growing coolness consequent upon standing in a draught. Then as he went up the steps from the area he cried, "Be sure and put on the brocade, Janet!"

It was an unbearable affront, for Janet had told her stories so often, and with so much innocent feeling, that though, of course, she could not quite believe them herself, she had nevertheless all the feelings of an indignant moralist insulted and outraged in her tenderest susceptibilities.

ADVENTURE XXVII.

JANET OF INVERNESS TASTES THE HERB BITTER-SWEET.

Janet duly arrived at the house of Mr. Robert Greg Tennant at the hour named in the invitation. She had had a great struggle with herself, but pride had ultimately triumphed. Her fellow-servants had given her no peace. She had, indeed, to dress in her black alpaca. But, sure enough, her hair had been done in the latest fashion by her only friend, the girl with whom the cook had seen her walking, who was an assistant in a hair-dresser's shop. It was so twisted and tortured that Janet felt "as if she had slept on it the wrong way," as she expressed it to herself. She passed and re-passed the end of the Avenue half-a-dozen times, but her courage would not let her ring the bell of the corner house. For there were lights in nearly every window, and a cab had just driven away from the door.

Poor Janet's heart leapt within her, and she had half a mind to turn homeward and confess that she had been romancing. But another cab stopped before the gate, and through the open door she saw a glimpse of lights and flowers that looked to her like Paradise—as she imagined it from the hymn-singing at the Salvation Army meetings.

So as the last cabman came slowly out of the Avenue, Janet called to him. The man was arranging his rugs about him for a long drive back to his stand at the centre of the town.

"I'll give you a sixpence if you will turn about and drive me up to that door you have just been at," said Janet.

"Done," said the man; "and good money for the job."

So, without betraying the least surprise or curiosity, the man turned about his vehicle, and Janet tripped daintily inside. They drove up to the door with prodigious rattle and ceremony. The cabman jumped from his seat and rang the bell in form. When the door was opened, Janet Urquhart paid the man his easily-earned sixpence. He touched his hat, and she went leadenly up the steps.

A trim maid-servant was at the door, who evidently had received very definite orders, for only the faintest curl of the nostril betrayed her own opinion of the affair.

When Janet was shown into the cloak-room her troubles began. Should she take off her hat, or not? She looked about to see if the ladies had left their hats. None were to be seen. Yet she had never seen ladies in the evening, except bareheaded. After long consideration she resolved to keep her hat on. But when she was in the doorway to go up to the drawing-room she saw a lady coming through the outer door with a shawl of soft gauzy wool over her head.

Janet shrank back instantly and turned cold with the thought of her escape. With trembling hands she took off her hat and pinned her veil to it as she had once seen her mistress do. The lady came in, bustling a little like one who knows she is late.

"It is cold to-night," she said affably to the shy girl standing in the doorway, but without looking at her.

"Yes, ma'am," said Janet, and the next moment she could have bitten her tongue out for the mistake.

"Oh, how I wish I had never come," she said a score of times to herself as she went up the stairs.

But it was too late to turn back.

"What name?" said the daintily-capped maiden, with the curl of her nostril a little more accentuated.

For a moment Janet was so taken aback that she could not even remember her own name.

"Janet," she stammered; "Janet—from Bailie Holden's."

The maid's face broadened into a smile, at sight of which poor Janet's lip quivered, and for a moment she thought that she must burst out crying. Scarcely was she able to keep back the welling tears. But the door was a little open, and she saw Miss Celie, whom she already knew and loved. The sight of that pleasant face, dimpling and flashing all over with bright kindness, reassured her.

"Say 'Janet Urquhart'!" she said, with a little faltering return of assurance in her voice.

And the trim maid-servant, with a strong protest in her tone, announced in accents of terrifying distinctness, "Miss Janet Urquhart."

Then she shut the door, and Janet was left standing aghast and speechless in the bright humming place.

"I would not have done it," soliloquised the indignant maid outside, "unless my place had depended on it."

But within Celie Tennant's drawing-room, poor silly little Janet of Inverness was being most pleasantly and charmingly entertained by her hostess. Celie had, in fact, asked only a few of her most intimate friends, whom she could trust with the momentous secret of the loves and sorrows of Cleaver's boy. The fascinating cousin from the tented field was there, ready for love or war. But it was to Donald Iverach that the principal work of the evening had been allotted.

It was he who first asked Janet to dance with him. It was he who sat out with her after her desperate failure, for she had lacked the courage to say that she had never learned to dance. It was he who found her a handkerchief, when, with the bitterness of disappointment, the tears at last would not keep down, but welled piteously up from the underlips of Janet's blue and childish eyes. It was Mr. Donald Iverach who took her down to supper, where she suffered agonies over the use of fish-knives and the management of a plate upon her knees. It was he who finally took her aside, and so fervidly pursued his wooing that, had Janet Urquhart been mercenary, he might without doubt have had a suit for breach of promise of marriage successfully brought against him. So far did the wooing proceed, and so fervently persistent was this wicked Junior Partner, that, bewildered and dazzled, poor Janet found herself being pressed to name the happy day, and, what is more, in some danger of doing it, too. As for the Junior Partner, that young man was obviously excited, but seemed quite unconscious of the risks he was running. Had the Senior Partner heard him, he would undoubtedly have considered his son to be rapidly qualifying for a strait jacket. But the infatuated youth held on his way. Janet and he were sitting in a little alcove at the top of the stairs, cobwebbed with the latest artistic Japonaiseries of the period.

"And now," urged the reckless youth, when he had sealed in due form the silent acquiescence he had won, "let us go back and tell them all that we are going to be married."

Mr. Donald Iverach was certainly quite mad. But Janet of Inverness was madder still, for instead of accepting the very eligible young man with modest reluctance, she burst out crying all at once without the least warning, and ran downstairs, leaving Donald Iverach standing spellbound looking after her. Down the stair and through the hall she ran. She opened the door and flew out into the night, crying "James! James! I want you, James!"

And the strangest part of the whole is that even as she opened the door two dark forms separated at the outer gate.

"There noo, look you after her," said Cleg Kelly to Cleaver's boy. And James Annan went as he was bidden. The girl's wild cry of "James! James!" hushed into quite another way of saying the same words, when she found herself clasped in the arms of Janet's boy—late Cleaver's. For James Annan not only had the root of the matter in him by nature, but, as we have seen, he was a lad of some little experience.

"What did I tell you, sir?" said Cleg to the Junior Partner, as they stood together on the step, and looked after the pair who had vanished into the darkness.

"It came out all right, I grant," said Mr. Donald Iverach, "but I want no more games with pretty kitchen-maids. I will tell you what—for three full minutes I thought she was going to take me!"

And the Junior Partner went down the street at the rate of five miles an hour.

ADVENTURE XXVIII.

THE ENGINE-DRIVER WITH THE BEARD.

What James Annan said to little Janet of Inverness on the way home, and what Janet of Inverness said to James Annan, I know. But since it concerns only themselves, with themselves I will leave it. At all events, it was no long season before they were at one. Miss Cecilia Tennant's exact share in the plot is a harder matter to apportion. But that she had a share in it far beyond the mere issuing of the invitations is certain, for Mr. Donald Iverach was heard saying to the arch-conspirator in the semi-privacy of the dusky angle of the stairs, "But what I want to make out is, what I am to get out of it."

"Virtue is its own reward," replied Miss Celie, sententiously, "and, besides, you make love to that sort of person so well, that it is evident you must have had a great deal of practice."

"Now I call that a little hard on me," said the Junior Partner, who felt that he had made a martyr of himself all the evening, and that he had, indeed, narrowly escaped the sacrificial altar.

"Wait," he said threateningly, "till you want me to do anything else of the kind for you."

Celie Tennant set her pretty head the least bit to the side. It could not be called a cock, but it was the next thing to it. Next she pursed her mouth till it looked like a cherry.

"You would do it just as quick if I asked you to do it all over again," said Celie Tennant, looking pins and needles at Donald Iverach, till the very palms of his hands pingled.

The Junior Partner stamped his foot.

"Oh, hang it all!" he cried, "I believe that's the God's truth—I would."

That night as he walked home, the Junior Partner, who had no gifts for the imparting of religious instruction, but who respected those who had (especially if they were pretty), wondered what could make a Sunday school teacher act in such a perverse manner. He could not understand how it was that Celie Tennant, who upon occasion would weep over the crushing of a fly, and who was all the time worrying her life out over these young rascals of hers, could yet take pleasure in tormenting a fellow-creature, and making his very existence a burden to him.

But when he came to think of it afterwards, he had to confess that on the whole he rather liked it. In fact, that he would rather be made unhappy by Celie Tennant than that anyone else should give him the happiness of Paradise. He was a rankly foolish young man, and he would have hugged his follies if this particular one would have permitted him.

The present chronicler has, be it understood, undertaken to relate the adventures of Cleg's companions as well as those which immediately concern the hero. But these adventures of Cleaver's boy and his Janet of Inverness were not without direct bearing upon the fates of Cleg and of his lost friends the Kavannahs. For it so happened that Duncan Urquhart, the uncle of Janet of Inverness, came one night to see her in the kitchen of Bailie Holden. The cook was pleased with him, for he was a single man and well bearded; in fact, the very kind of man whom all cooks adore. Housemaids, on the other hand, like clean-shaven or moustached men, and as a rule prefer to catch them younger. And this is the reason why cooks marry gardeners while housemaids marry coachmen. While nurses, having had enough of children, live to a good old age in picturesque cottages, with assured pensions and uncertain tempers, eventually dying old maids. At least, so sayeth the philosopher.

Duncan Urquhart was not the chief of a clan. He was an engine-driver in the goods department of the Greenock and South-Eastern Railway. In the course of conversation the engine-driver, chiefly for the sake of the applause of the cook, cast about him for moving tales of the iron road on which his working hours were passed. He had settled in his mind that the cook was a wonderful woman. She could, to his certain knowledge, watch a roast, turn an omelette, taste a soup, and cast a languishing glance over her shoulder at him, all at the same time. He could not help thinking how excellent a thing it would be to come home after a grimy run on the footplate. And then, having washed, sit down in his own house to the soup, the omelette, and the joint, with (so little did he know) as many of the languishing glances as he could wish for, thrown in as a permanent asset of his home. So overcome was he by the idea, that for the moment he forgot that matters had proceeded even further with another cook in the town of Netherby, which formed his alternate stopping-place. It was a pity, he sometimes thought (for an instant only), that the laws of his country did not permit two such homes to be set up, one at either end of his daily journeyings.

Now, as one good effect of Duncan Urquhart's visit to the kitchen of Bailie Holden, the position of Janet of Inverness as kitchenmaid was made a far more tolerable one. It is a thing strongly advisable, that if the junior domestics of a house have presentable brothers or even uncles, unmarried and eligible, they should make haste to produce them. Janet of Inverness quite understood this. She knew, indeed, that Duncan was to marry his cousin Mary in the Black Isle. But she was far too wise a little girl to say anything about a family arrangement like that. And then the cook always allowed her to walk in pleasanter places for several days after the visits of her Uncle Duncan, who, as has been said, was a handsome man with a beard, and in habit very well put on and desirable.

But it is with Duncan's story that we have to do. Duncan had the English of Inverness crossed with the dialect peculiar to the Greenock and South-Eastern—a line whose engines are apple-green and gold, but the speech of whose engineers is blue, with purple patches. Not that Duncan swore before ladies, though Bailie Holden's cook would have forgiven him because of his beard. It was indeed a habit she was rather partial to, thinking it a mighty offset to the conversation of bearded men. There was no denying that Duncan's speech was picturesque. But Cleg could not help feeling that swearing of Duncan's sort was altogether roundabout and unmanly. For himself, when he had need and occasion, he simply said "Dam" and had done with it. Anything more savoured of superfluity to a boy of his simple tastes.

Duncan the engine-driver was talking about feats of strength.

"In my young days," he said, "I could toss the caber with any man. The Black Deil o' Dumfries tak' me, gin I couldna send a young tree birlin' through the air as if it had been a bit spale board. But ye should see Muckle Alick doon at Netherby Junction, where I pit up for the nicht. He's the porter there on the passenger side. An' the mid steeple is no better kenned for twenty miles round Netherby. Hands like the Day o' Judgment comin' in a thunder-cloud—heart like a wee white-faced lammie on the braes o' the Black Isle—that's Muckle Alick o' Netherby.

"As braid across the breast as if he was the gable end o' a bakehoose coming linkin' doon the street its lane. Lord bless me, when the big storm blew doon the distant signals last spring, I declare gin Muckle Alick didna juist stand on the railway brig that sits end on to the Market Hill, and signal in the trains wi' airms like the cross trees o' a man-o'-war!

"I declare to conscience it's a Guid's truth!

"Aye, an' when that puir trembling chicken-hearted crowl, Tam Mac Wheeble, that drives the Port Andrew passenger, stood still, wi' the bull's-eyes o' his wee blue engine juist looking round the corner, an' whistled and yelled for the proper signal, pretendin' that he didna see Muckle Alick (him belongin' to anither kirk), Alick cried doon at him off the brig, so that they could hear him half a mile, 'Ye donnert U. P., come on wi' your auld steam-roller an' your ill-faured cargo o' Irish drovers, or I'll come doon an' harl ye a' in mysel'!'

"Fac' as daith! I was there, talkin' to a nice bit lass that stands in the Refresh'!

"You weakly toon-bred loons" (here Duncan Urquhart looked at Cleg and Cleaver's boy) "thinks me a strong man. But Alick, though his shooders are gettin' a wee bowed and his craw-black hair is noo but a birse o' grey, could tak' half-a-dozen like me and daud our heads thegither till we couldna speak. True as the 'Reason Annexed' to the Third Commandment! I hae seen him wi' thae een that's in my head the noo!"

"Tell us mair," said Cleg, standing with his mouth open, for the relation of feats of strength is every unlearned man's "Iliad." So Duncan went on to tell mighty things of the wrath of Muckle Alick.

"But, lads, ye maun ken Alick is no a ramblin' wastrel like the rest o' us. He's an elder amang the Cameronians. Haith! a weel-learned man is Alick, an' guid company for a minister—or ony other man. And never an ill word oot o' the mouth o' him. Na, no even when yince there was twa trains at different platforms, an' the station-maister cried to Alick to tak' the tickets frae baith o' them at the same time. 'Juist tak' the Port Road train yoursel', gin ye are in sic a fidge!' quoth Alick. An' it was the station-maister that swore—Alick was even mair pleased-like than usual.

"But nae man ever saw Muckle Alick angry. The ill-set callants o' the Clearin' Hoose tries whiles to provoke him. Alick, he says little—only looks at them like a big sleepy dog when the pups are yelping. Then after a while he says, 'Ye are like Tam Purdy's cat, when it ate the herrin' he had for his breakfast the time he was askin' the blessin', ye are "gettin' raither pet!"'

"And then, if they winna take a telling, Alick will grip them in his loofs, gie them a shake and a daud thegither as if he was knockin' the stour aff a couple o' books, syne stick their heads in a couple o' bags o' Indian meal, an' leave them wi' their heels in the air. But Alick is never oot o' temper. And ceevil—fresh kirned butter is no sweeter at eighteenpence a pund!"

ADVENTURE XXIX.

MUCKLE ALICK'S BANNOCKBURN.

"But what was I gaun to tell ye? Oh, aboot the Irish drovers. Ye maun ken they are no a very weel-liked class doon aboot Netherby. For they come in squads to the Market Hill on Mondays, and whiles their tongues and their sticks are no canny. Though some, I'm no denyin', are ceevil chiels. But them that I'm gaun to tell ye aboot were no that kind.

"It was the middle o' the day and Alick was away for his denner. There had been a bad market that day. Baith the marts were through hours afore their usual. So the drovers swarmed up to the station to get the afternoon train for Port Andrew. And on the platform the drinkin' frae bottles an' the swearin' was fair extraordinar'! So I am telled. Then, when the train cam' in, there was eight or nine o' the warst o' them that wadna be served but they maun a' get into a first-class compartment. And oot o' that they wadna get!

"The station-maister was a young man then and newly gotten on. He thocht a heap o' himsel'—as a young station-maister aye does when he first gets on the stemmed bonnet, and comes oot frae the office like Lord Almichty wi' a pen ahint his lug.

"Weel, at ony rate, the Netherby station-maister was that kind. An' he was determined that naebody should cross him in his ain station.

"'I'll juist lock them in and let them fecht it oot,' said the guard, 'and by the time we are through the big cutting at the Stroan they'll hae shuggled doon as quaite as a session.'

"It was doubtless good advice. But the station-maister was mainly angered. He gaed to the door o' the compartment and threatened the drovers wi' the law. And they juist pelted him wi' auld sodjers and ill talk. Then he cried for a' the porters and clerks, till there was a knot o' ten or a dozen o' them aboot the door—and a' the folk in the train wi' their heads oot o' the windows, askin' what on earth (an' ither places) was keepin' the train. And doon the main line the express was fair whustling blue-fire and vengeance because the signals were against her. But nae farther could they get. The station-maister he was determined to hae the drovers oot. And they were as set no to come—being gye and weel filled wi' the weedow's cheapest market whusky that she keepit special for the drovers, for faith it wad hae scunnert a decent Heelant sow! I tried it yince and was I the waur o't for a fortnicht. But ony whusky is guid enough for an Irishman, if only ye stir plenty o' soot amang it! They think they're hame again if they get that.

"So here the hale traffic o' Netherby Junction was stelled for maybe a quarter o' an hour, and the station-maister was nearly daft to think what he wad hae to enter on his detention sheet. A' at ance somebody cries, 'Here's Muckle Alick coming up the street.' And sure enough there he was, coming alang by the hill dyke wi' his hands in his pooches. For ye see this wasna his train, and he had ten minutes to spare. So wi' that the station-maister and the guaird and half-a-dozen lads frae the offices rins to the far side o' the platform, waving on Alick and crying on him to come on. Alick he juist looks aboot to see wha was late for the train. But no' seein' onybody he steps leisurely alang, drawin' on his weel-gaun pipe, proud-like as ye hae seen an elephant at the head o' a show.

"And the mair they cried and waved, the mair Alick looked aboot him for the man that was late for the train.

"'It maun be the provost at the least, wi' a' this fuss,' said he to himself; 'he'll be gaun to Loch Skerrow to fish!'

"At last a wee upsettin' booking-clerk, the size o' twa scrubbers, cam rinning and telled Alick a' aboot the drovers and the state the station-maister was in.

"'I'm no on duty at this train,' says Alick, 'but I'll come and speak to them.'

"So they made way for him, and Alick gaed through the crowd at the platform like a liner through the herring-fleet below the Tail o' the Bank.

"'Lads,' says he to the drovers, 'what's this?—what's this?'