"I have taken you at your word, you see, Miss Mackenzie. You
told me not to give alms in the street, and to bring the
begging children to you. So here is one now."
Thus introduced, the begging child was pushed forward into
the room by the speaker, a lady who was holding her by one
shoulder.
She was a stunted, slim creature, that might have been any
age from nine to fourteen, barefooted and bareheaded, and
wearing a Rob Roy tartan frock. She entered in a sidelong way
that was at once timid and confidently independent, and stared
all round her with a pair of large brown eyes. She did not seem
to be in the least frightened, and when released by her
guardian stood at ease comfortably on one foot, tucking the
other away out of sight among the not too voluminous folds of
her frock.
It was close on twelve o'clock of a March day in the poor
sewing-women's workroom in Drummond street. The average number
of women of the usual sort were collected together—a
depressed and silent gathering. It seemed as if the bitter east
wind had dulled and chilled them into a grayer monotony of look
than usual, so that they might be in harmony with the general
aspect which things without had assumed at its grim bidding. A
score or so of wan faces looked up for a minute, but the child,
after all, had nothing in her appearance that was calculated to
repay attention, and the lady was known to them all. So "white
seam" reasserted its old authority without much delay.
Miss Mackenzie laid down the scissors which she had been
using on a bit of coarse cotton, and advanced in reply to the
address of the newcomer. "How do you do? and where did you pick
up this creature?" she asked, looking curiously at the
importation.
"Near George IV. Bridge, on this side of it, and I just took
hold of her and brought her off to you at once. I don't
believe"—this was said sotto voce—"that she
has a particle of clothing on her but that frock."
"Very likely.—What is your name, my child?"
"Baubie Wishart, mem." She spoke in an apologetic tone,
glancing down at her feet, the one off duty being lowered for
the purpose of inspection, which over, she hoisted the foot
again immediately into the recesses of the Rob Roy tartan.
"Have you a father and mother?"
"Yes, mem."
"What does your father do?"
Baubie Wishart glanced down again in thought for an instant,
then raised her eyes for the first time directly to her
questioner's face: "He used to be a Christy man, but he canna
be that any longer, sae he goes wi' boords."
"Why cannot he be a Christy man any longer?"
Down came the foot once more, and this time took up its
position permanently beside the other: "Because mother drinks
awfu', an' pawned the banjo for drink." This family history was
related in the most matter-of-fact, natural way.
"And does your father drink too?" asked Miss Mackenzie after
a short pause.
Baubie Wishart's eyes wandered all round the room, and with
one toe she swept up a little mass of dust before she answered
in a voice every tone of which spoke unwilling truthfulness,
"Just whiles—Saturday nichts."
"Is he kind to you?"
"Ay," looking up quickly, "excep' just whiles when he's
fou—Saturday nichts, ye ken—and then he beats me;
but he's rale kind when he's sober."
"Were you ever at school?"
"No, mem," with a shake of the head that seemed to convey
that she had something else, and probably better, to do.
"Did you ever hear of God?" asked the lady who had brought
her.
"Ay, mem," answered Baubie quite readily: "it's a kind of a
bad word I hear in the streets."
"How old are you?" asked both ladies simultaneously.
"Thirteen past," replied Baubie, with a promptness that made
her listeners smile, suggesting as it did the thought that the
question had been put to her before, and that Baubie knew well
the import of her answer.
She grew more communicative now. She could not read, but,
all the same, she knew two songs which she sang in the
streets—"Before the Battle" and "After the Battle;" and,
carried away by the thought of her own powers, she actually
began to give proof of her assertion by reciting one of them
there and then. This, however, was stopped at once. "Can knit
too," she added then.
"Who taught you to knit?"
"Don' know. Wis at a Sunday-schuil too."
"Oh, you were? And what did you learn there?"
Baubie Wishart looked puzzled, consulted her toes in vain,
and then finally gave it up.
"I should like to do something for her," observed her first
friend: "it is time this street-singing came to an end."
"She is intelligent, clearly," said Miss Mackenzie, looking
curiously at the child, whose appearance and bearing rather
puzzled her. There was not a particle of the professional
street-singer about Baubie Wishart, the child of that species
being generally clean-washed, or at least soapy, of face, with
lank, smooth-combed and greasy hair; and usually, too, with a
smug, sanctimonious air of meriting a better fate. Baubie
Wishart presented none of these characteristics: her face was
simply filthy; her hair was a red-brown, loosened tangle that
reminded one painfully of oakum in its first stage. And she
looked as if she deserved a whipping, and defied it too. She
was just a female arab—an arab plus an
accomplishment—bright, quick and inconsequent as a
sparrow, and reeking of the streets and gutters, which had been
her nursery.
"Yes," continued the good lady, "I must look after her."
"Poor little atom! I suppose you will find out where the
parents live, and send the school-board officer to them. That
is the usual thing, is it not? I must go, Miss Mackenzie.
Good-bye for to-day. And do tell me what you settle for
her."
Miss Mackenzie promised, and her friend took her
departure.
"Go and sit by the fire, Baubie Wishart, for a little, and
then I shall be ready to talk to you."
Nothing loath apparently, Baubie established herself at the
end of the fender, and from that coign of vantage watched the
on-goings about her with the stoicism of a red Indian. She
showed no symptom of wonder at anything, and listened to the
disquisitions of Miss Mackenzie and the matron as to the proper
adjustment of parts—"bias," "straights," "gathers,"
"fells," "gussets" and "seams," a whole new language as it
unrolled its complexities before her—with complacent
indifference.
At last, all the web of cotton being cut up, the time came
to go. Miss Mackenzie buttoned up her sealskin coat, and
pulling on a pair of warm gloves beckoned Baubie, who rose with
alacrity: "Where do your father and mother live?"
"Kennedy's Lodgings, in the Gressmarket, mem."
"I know the place," observed Miss Mackenzie, to whom,
indeed, most of these haunts were familiar. "Take me there now,
Baubie."
They set out together. Baubie trotted in front, turning her
head, dog-fashion, at every corner to see if she were followed.
They reached the Grassmarket at last, and close to the corner
of the West Bow found an entry with the whitewashed inscription
above it, "Kennedy's Lodgings." Baubie glanced round to see if
her friend was near, then vanished upward from her sight. Miss
Mackenzie kilted her dress and began the ascent of the stairs,
the steps of which, hollowed out as they were by the tread of
centuries of human feet, afforded a not too safe footing.
Arrived at the third floor, she found Baubie waiting for
her, breathless and panting.
"It's here," she said—"the big kitchen, mem."
A long, narrow passage lay before them, off which doors
opened on all sides. Precipitating herself at one of these
doors, Baubie Wishart, who could barely reach the latch, pushed
it open, giving egress to a confusion of noises, which seemed
to float above a smell of cooking, in which smell herrings and
onions contended for the mastery.
It was a very large room, low-ceilinged, but well enough
lighted by a couple of windows, which looked into a close
behind. The walls had been whitewashed once upon a time, but
the whitewash was almost lost to view under the decorations
with which it was overlaid. These consisted of pictures cut out
of the illustrated weekly papers or milliners' books. All sorts
of subjects were represented: fashion-plates hung side by side
with popular preachers and statesmen, race-horses and Roman
Catholic saints; red-and white-draped Madonnas elbowed the
"full-dress" heroines of the penny weeklies. It was a curious
gallery, and a good many of the works of art had the merit of
being antique. Generations of flies had emblazoned their deeds
of prowess on the papers: streaks of candle-grease bore witness
to the inquiring turn of mind, attracted by the letter-press,
or the artistic proclivities of Kennedy's lodgers. It was about
two, the dinner-hour probably, which accounted for the presence
of so many people in the room. Most, but not all, seemed to be
of the wandering class. They were variously employed. Some were
sitting on the truckle-beds that ran round the walls; one or
two were knitting or sewing; a cripple was mending baskets in
one of the windows; and about the fire a group were collected
superintending the operations which produced, though not
unaided, the odors with which the room was reeking.
Miss Mackenzie stood for a few minutes, unnoticed
apparently, looking about her at the motley crowd. Baubie on
entering the room had raised herself for a second on tiptoe to
look into a distant corner, and then, remarking to herself,
half audibly, "His boords is gane," subsided, and contented
herself with watching Miss Mackenzie's movements.
There seemed to be no one to do the honors. The inmates all
looked at each other for a moment hesitatingly, then resumed
their various occupations. A young woman, a sickly, livid-faced
creature, rose from her place behind the door, and, advancing
with a halting step, said to Miss Mackenzie, "Mistress
Kennedy's no' in, an' Wishart's oot wi's boords."
"I wanted to see him about this child, who was found begging
in the streets to-day."
Miss Mackenzie looked curiously at the woman, wondering if
she could belong in any way to the Wishart family. She was a
miserable object, seemingly in the last stage of
consumption.
"Eh, mem," she answered hurriedly, and drawing nearer,
"ye're a guid leddy, I ken, an' tak' t' lassie away oot o'
this. The mither's an awfu' wuman: tak' her away wi' ye, or
she'll sune be as bad. She'll be like mysel' and the rest o'
them here."
"I will, I will," Miss Mackenzie said, shocked and startled,
recoiling before the spirit-reeking breath of this warning
spectre. "I will, I will," she repeated hastily. There was no
use remaining any longer. She went out, beckoning to Baubie,
who was busy rummaging about a bed at the top of the room.
Baubie had bethought her that it was time to take her father
his dinner. So she slipped over to that corner of the big
kitchen which was allotted to the Wishart family and possessed
herself of a piece of a loaf which was hidden away there. As
she passed by the fire she profited by the momentary
abstraction of the people who were cooking to snap up and make
her own a brace of unconsidered trifles in the shape of onions
which were lying near them. These, with the piece of bread, she
concealed on her person, and then returned to Miss Mackenzie,
who was now in the passage.
"Baubie," said that lady, "I will send some one here about
you. Now, don't let me hear of your singing in the streets or
begging again. You will get into trouble if you do."
She was descending the stairs as she spoke, and she turned
round when she had reached the entry: "You know the police will
take you, Baubie."
"Yes, mem," answered Baubie, duly impressed.
"Well, now, I am going home. Stay: are you hungry?"
Without waiting for her answer, Miss Mackenzie entered a
tiny shop close by, purchased a mutton-pie and handed it to
Baubie Wishart, who received it with wondering reverence. Miss
Mackenzie took her way home westward up the Grassmarket. She
turned round before leaving it by way of King's Stables, and
caught sight of Bauble's frock by the entry of Kennedy's
Lodgings—a tiny morsel of color against the shadow of the
huge gray houses. She thought of the big kitchen and its
occupants, and the face and words of the poor girl, and
promised herself that she would send the school-board officer
to Kennedy's Lodgings that very night.
Baubie waited till her friend was well out of sight: then
she hid her mutton-pie in the same place with the onions and
the piece of bread, and started up the Grassmarket in her turn.
She stopped at the first shop she passed and bought a
pennyworth of cheese. Then she made her way to the Lothian
road, and looked up and down it anxiously in search of the
walking advertisement-man. He was not there, so she directed
her course toward Princes street, and after promenading it as
far east as the Mound, she turned up into George street, and
caught sight of her father walking along slowly by the
curbstone. It was not long before she overtook him.
"Od, lassie, I wis thinkin' lang," he began wearily as soon
as he realized her apparition. Baubie did not wait for him to
finish: with a peremptory nod she signified her will, and he
turned round and followed her a little way down Hanover street.
Then Baubie selected a flight of steps leading to a basement
store, and throwing him a look of command flitted down and
seated herself at the bottom. It was sheltered from the cold
wind and not too much overlooked. Wishart shifted the boards
from about his shoulders, and, following her, laid them against
the wall at the side of the basement-steps, and sat down
heavily beside her. He was a sickly-looking man, sandy-haired,
with a depressed and shifty expression of face—not
vicious, but weak and vacillating. Baubie seemed to have the
upper hand altogether: every gesture showed it. She opened the
paper that was wrapped about her fragment of rank yellow
cheese, laid it down on the step between them, and then
produced, in their order of precedence, the pie, the onions and
the bread.
"Wha gied ye that?" asked Wishart, gazing at the
mutton-pie.
"A leddy," replied Baubie, concisely.
"An' they?" pointing to the onions.
A nod was all the answer, for Baubie, who was hungry, was
busy breaking the piece of loaf. Wishart with great care
divided the pie without spilling much more than half its gravy,
and began on his half of it and the biggest onion
simultaneously. Baubie ate up her share of pie, declined
cheese, and attacked her onion and a great piece of crust. The
crust was very tough, and after the mutton-pie rather dry and
tasteless, and she laid it down presently in her lap, and after
a few minutes' passive silence began: "That," nodding at the
cheese, or what was left of it rather, "wis all I got—ae
penny. The leddy took me up till a hoose, an' anither are that
wis there came doon hame and gaed in ben, an' wis speirin' for
ye, an' says she'll gie me till the polis for singin' an'
askin' money in t' streets, an' wants you to gie me till her to
pit in schuil."
She stopped and fixed her eyes on him, watching the effect
of her words. Wishart laid down his bread and cheese and stared
back at her. It seemed to take some time for his brain to
realize all the meaning of her pregnant speech.
"Ay," he said after a while, and with an effort, "I maun
tak' ye to Glasgae, to yer aunt. Ye'll be pit in schuil if yer
caught."
"I'll no bide," observed Baubie, finishing off her onion
with a grimace. The raw onion was indeed strong and hot, even
for Bauble's not too epicurean palate, but it had been got for
nothing—a circumstance from which it derived a flavor
which many people more dainty than Bauble Wishart find to be
extremely appetizing.
"Bide!" echoed her father: "they'll mak' ye bide. Gin I had
only the banjo agen!" sighed the whilom Christy man, getting up
and preparing to adjust the boards once more.
The last crumb of the loaf was done, and Bauble, refreshed,
got up too. "Whenll ye be hame?" she questioned abruptly when
they had reached the top of the steps.
"Seven. Gaeway hame wi' ye, lassie, noo. Ye didna see
her?" he questioned as he walked off.
"Na," replied Bauble, standing still and looking about her
as if to choose which way she should take.
He sighed deeply, and moved off slowly on his way back to
his post, with the listless, hopeless air that seems to belong
to the members of his calling.
Bauble obeyed her parent's commands in so far as that she
did go home, but as she took Punch and Judy in her course up
the Mound, and diverged as far as a football match in the
Meadows, it was nearly seven before Kennedy's Lodgings saw her
again.
The following morning, shortly after breakfast, Miss
Mackenzie's butler informed her that there was a child who
wanted to speak with her in the hall. On going down she found
Bauble Wishart on the mat.
"Where is your father? and why did he not come with you?"
asked Miss Mackenzie, puzzled.
"He thoucht shame to come an' speak wi' a fine leddy like
you." This excuse, plausible enough, was uttered in a low voice
and with downcast eyes, but hardly was it pronounced when she
burst out rapidly and breathlessly into what was clearly the
main object of her visit: "But please, mem, he says he'll gie
me to you if ye'll gie him the three shillin's to tak' the
banjo oot o' the pawn."
This candid proposal took Miss Mackenzie's breath away. To
become the owner of Baubie Wishart, even at so low a price,
seemed to her rather a heathenish proceeding, with a flavor of
illegality about it to boot. There was a vacancy at the home
for little girls which might be made available for the little
wretch without the necessity of any preliminary of this kind;
and it did not occur to her that it was a matter of any moment
whether Mr. Wishart continued to exercise the rôle of
"sandwich-man" or returned to his normal profession of
banjo-player. Baubie was to be got hold of in any case. With
the muttered adjuration of the wretched girl in Kennedy's
Lodgings echoing in her ears, Miss Mackenzie determined that
she should be left no longer than could be helped in that
company.
How earnest and matter of fact she was in delivering her
extraordinary errand! thought Miss Mackenzie to herself,
meeting the eager gaze of Baubie Wishart's eyes, looking out
from beneath her tangle of hair like those of a Skye
terrier.
"I will speak to your father myself, Baubie—tell him
so—to-morrow, perhaps: tell him I mean to settle about
you myself. Now go."
The least possible flicker of disappointment passed over
Baubie's face. The tangled head drooped for an instant, then
she bobbed by way of adieu and vanished.
That day and the next passed before Miss Mackenzie found it
possible to pay her long-promised visit to Mr. Wishart, and
when, about eleven in the forenoon, she once more entered the
big kitchen in Kennedy's Lodgings, she was greeted with the
startling intelligence that the whole Wishart family were in
prison.
The room was as full as before. Six women were sitting in
the middle of the floor teasing out an old hair mattress. There
was the same odor of cooking, early as it was, and the same
medley of noises, but the people were different. The
basket-making cripple was gone, and in his place by the window
sat a big Irish beggar-woman, who was keeping up a conversation
with some one (a compatriot evidently) in a window of the close
behind.
The mistress of the house came forward. She was a
decent-looking little woman, but had rather a hard face,
expressive of care and anxiety. On recognizing her visitor she
curtsied: "The Wisharts, mem? Yes, they're a' in jail."
"All in jail?" echoed Miss Mackenzie. "Will you come outside
and speak to me? There are so many people—"
"Eh yes, mem: I'm sure ye fin' the room closs. Eh yes, mem,
the Wisharts are a' in the lock-up."
They were standing outside in the passage, and Mrs. Kennedy
held the door closed by the latch, which she kept firmly
grasped in her hand. It struck Miss Mackenzie as being an odd
way to secure privacy for a privileged communication, to fasten
the door of their room upon those inside. It was expressive,
however.
"Ye see, mem," began the landlady, "Wishart's no a very bad
man—jist weak in the heid like—but's wife is jist
something awfu', an' I could not let her bide in a decent
lodging-house. We hae to dra' the line somewhere, and I dra' it
low enough, but she wis far below that. Eh, she's jist
terrible! Wishart has a sister in Glasgae verra weel to do, an'
I h'ard him say he'd gie the lassie to her if it wer na for the
wife. The day the school-board gentleman wis here she came
back: she'd been away, ye ken, and she said she'd become a
t'otaller, an' so I sed she micht stay; but, ye see, when nicht
came on she an' Wishart gaed out thegither, an' jist to
celebrate their bein' frien's again she an' him gaed intil a
public, an' she got uproarious drunk, an' the polis took her
up. Wishart wis no sae bad, sae they let him come hame; but, ye
see, he had tasted the drink, an' wanted mair, an' he hadna ony
money. Ye see, he'd promised the gentleman who came here that
he widna send Baubie oot to sing again. But he did send
her oot then to sing for money for him, an' the polis had been
put to watch her, an' saw her beg, an' took her up to the
office, an' came back here for Wishart. An' so before the day
was dune they were a' lockit up thegither."
Such was the story related to Miss Mackenzie. What was to be
done with Baubie now? It was hardly fair that she should be
sent to a reformatory among criminal children. She had
committed no crime, and there was that empty bed at the home
for little girls. She determined to attend the sheriff-court on
Monday morning and ask to be given the custody of Baubie.
When Monday morning came, ten o'clock saw Miss Mackenzie
established in a seat immediately below the sheriff's high
bench. The Wisharts were among the first batch tried, and made
their appearance from a side-door. Mrs. Wishart came first,
stepping along with a resolute, brazen bearing that contrasted
with her husband's timid, shuffling gait. She was a
gypsy-looking woman, with wandering, defiant black eyes, and
her red face had the sign-manual of vice stamped upon it. After
her came Baubie, a red-tartan-covered mite, shrinking back and
keeping as close to her father as she could. Baubie had favored
her mother as to complexion: that was plain. The top of her
rough head and her wild brown eyes were just visible over the
panel as she stared round her, taking in with composure and
astuteness everything that was going on. She was the most
self-possessed of her party, for under Mrs. Wishart's active
brazenness there could easily be seen fear and a certain
measure of remorse hiding themselves; and Wishart seemed to be
but one remove from imbecility.
The charges were read with a running commentary of bad
language from Mrs. Wishart as her offences were detailed;
Wishart blinked in a helpless, pathetic way; Baubie, who seemed
to consider herself as associated with him alone in the charge,
assumed an air of indifference and sucked her thumb, meantime
watching Miss Mackenzie furtively. She felt puzzled to account
for her presence there, but it never entered her head to
connect that fact with herself in any way.
"Guilty or not guilty?" asked the sheriff-clerk.
"There's a kin' lady in coort," stammered Wishart, "an' she
kens a' aboot it."
"Guilty or not guilty?" reiterated the clerk: "this is not
the time to speak." "She kens it a', an' she wis to tak' the
lassie."
"Guilty or not guilty? You must plead, and you can say what
you like afterward." Wishart stopped, not without an appealing
look at the kind lady, and pleaded guilty meekly. A policeman
with a scratched face and one hand plastered up testified to
the extravagances Mrs. Wishart had committed on the strength of
her conversion to teetotal principles.
Baubic heard it all impassively, her face only betraying
anything like keen interest while the police-officer was
detailing his injuries. Three months' imprisonment was the
sentence on Margaret Mactear or Wishart. Then Wishart's
sentence was pronounced—sixty days.
He and Baubie drew nearer to each other, Wishart with a
despairing, helpless look. Baubie's eyes looked like those of a
hare taken in a gin. Not one word had been said about her. She
was not to go with her father. What was to become of her? She
was not long left in doubt as to her fate.
"I will take the child, sheriff," said Miss Mackenzie
eagerly and anxiously. "I came here purposely to offer her a
home in the refuge."
"Policeman, hand over the child to this lady at once," said
the sheriff.—
"Nothing could be better, Miss Mackenzie. It is very good of
you to volunteer to take charge of her."
Mrs. Wishart disappeared with a parting volley of blasphemy;
her husband, casting, as he went, a wistful look at Miss
Mackenzie, shambled fecklessly after the partner of his joys
and sorrows; and the child remained alone behind. The policeman
took her by an arm and drew her forward to make room for a
fresh consignment of wickedness from the cells at the side.
Baubie breathed a short sigh as the door closed upon her
parents, shook back her hair, and looked up at Miss Mackenzie,
as if to announce her readiness and good will. Not one vestige
of her internal mental attitude could be gathered from her
sun-and wind-beaten little countenance. There was no
rebelliousness, neither was there guilt. One would almost have
thought she had been told beforehand what was to happen, so
cool and collected was she.
"Now, Baubie, I am going to take you home. Come, child."
Pleased with her success, Miss Mackenzie, so speaking, took
the little waif's hand and led her out of the police-court into
the High street. She hardly dared to conjecture that it was
Baubie Wishart's first visit to that place, but as she stood on
the entrance-steps and shook out her skirts with a sense of
relief, she breathed a sincere hope that it might be the
child's last.
A cab was waiting. Baubie, to her intense delight and no
less astonishment, was requested to occupy the front seat. Miss
Mackenzie gave the driver his order and got in, facing the red
tartan bundle.
"Were you ever in a cab before?" asked Miss Mackenzie.
"Na, niver," replied Baubie in a rapt tone and without
looking at her questioner, so intent was she on staring out of
the windows, between both of which she divided her attention
impartially.
They were driving down the Mound, and the outlook, usually
so far-reaching from that vantage-ground, was bounded by a
thick sea-fog that the east wind was carrying up from the Forth
and dispensing with lavish hands on all sides. The buildings
had a grim, black look, as if a premature old age had come upon
them, and the black pinnacles of the Monument stood out sharply
defined in clear-cut, harsh distinctness against the floating
gray background. There were not many people stirring in the
streets. It was a depressing atmosphere, and Miss Mackenzie
observed before long that Baubie either seemed to have become
influenced by it or that the novelty of the cab-ride had worn
off completely. They crossed the Water of Leith, worn to a mere
brown thread owing to the long drought, by Stockbridge street
bridge, and a few yards from it found themselves before a gray
stone house separated from the street by a grass-plot
surrounded by a stone wall: inside the wall grew chestnut and
poplar trees, which in summer must have shaded the place
agreeably, but which this day, in the cold gray mist, seemed
almost funereal in their gloomy blackness. The gate was opened
from within the wall as soon as Miss Mackenzie rang, and she
and Baubie walked up the little flagged path together. As the
gate clanged to behind them Baubie looked back involuntarily
and sighed.
"Don't fear, lassie," said her guide: "they will be very
kind to you here. And it will be just a good home for you."
It may be questioned whether this promise of a good home
awoke any pleasing associations or carried with it any definite
meaning to Baubie Wishart's mind. She glanced up as if to show
that she understood, but her eyes turned then and rested on the
square front of the little old-fashioned gray house with its
six staring windows and its front circumscribed by the wall and
the black poplars and naked chestnuts, and she choked down
another sigh.
"Now, Mrs. Duncan," Miss Mackenzie was saying to a
comfortably-dressed elderly woman, "here's your new girl,
Baubie Wishart."
"Eh, ye've been successful then, Miss Mackenzie?"
"Oh dear, yes: the sheriff made no objection. And now, Mrs.
Duncan, I hope she will be a good girl and give you no
trouble.—Come here, Baubie, and promise me to do
everything you are told and obey Mrs. Duncan in
everything."
"Yes, mem," answered Bauble reverently, almost solemnly.
There seemed to be no necessity for further exhortation.
Baubie's demeanor promised everything that was hoped for or
wanted, and, perfectly contented, Miss Mackenzie turned her
attention to the minor details of wardrobe, etc.: "That frock
is good enough if it were washed. She must get shoes and
stockings; and then underwear, too, of some sort will be
wanted."
"That will it," responded the matron; "but I had better send
her at once to get a bath."
A big girl was summoned from a back room and desired to get
ready a tub. It was the ceremony customary at the reception of
a neophyte—customary, and in general very necessary
too.
Baubie's countenance fell lower still on hearing this, and
she blinked both eyes deprecatingly. Nevertheless, when the big
girl—whom they called Kate—returned, bringing with
her a warm whiff of steam and soap, she trotted after her
obediently and silently.
After a while the door opened, and Kate's yellow head
appeared. "Speak with ye, mem?" she said. "I hae her washen
noo, but what for claes?"
"Eh yes.—Miss Mackenzie, we can't put her back into
those dirty clothes."
"Oh no.—I'll come and look at her clothes, Kate." As
she spoke Miss Mackenzie rose and followed the matron and Kate
into a sort of kitchen or laundry.
In the middle of the floor was a tub containing Miss Wishart
mid-deep in soapsuds. Her thick hair was all soaking, and clung
fast to her head: dripping locks hung clown over her eyes,
which looked out through the tangle patient and suffering. She
glanced up quickly as Miss Mackenzie came in, and then resigned
herself passively into Kate's hands, who with a piece of
flannel had resumed the scrubbing process.
Miss Mackenzie was thinking to herself that it was possibly
Baubie Wishart's first experience of the kind, when she
observed the child wince as if she were hurt.
"It's yon' as hurts her," said Kate, calling the matron's
attention to something on the child's shoulders. They both
stooped and saw a long blue-and-red mark—a bruise all
across her back. Nor was this the only evidence of
ill-treatment: other bruises, and even scars, were to be seen
on the lean little body.
"Puir thing!" said the matron in a low tone,
sympathizingly.
"Baubie, who gave you that bruise?" asked Miss
Mackenzie.
No answer from Baubie, who seemed to be absorbed in watching
the drops running off the end of her little red nose, which
played the part of a gargoyle to the rest of her face.
Miss Mackenzie repeated the question, sternly almost:
"Bauble Wishart, I insist upon knowing who gave you that
bruise."
"A didna gie't to mysel', mem." was the answer from the
figure in the soapsuds. There was a half sob in the voice as of
terror, and her manner had all the appearance of
ingenuousness.
The matron and Miss Mackenzie looked at each other
significantly, and agreed tacitly that there was no use in
pushing the question.
"Od!" said Kate, who had paused in the act of taking a warm
towel from the fireplace to listen, "a'body kens ye didna gie
it till yoursel', lassie."
"Where are her clothes?" said the matron. "Oh, here. Yon
frock's good enough if it was washed; but, losh me! just look
at these for clothes!" She was exhibiting some indescribable
rags as she spoke.
"Kate," said Miss Mackenzie, "dress her in the lassie
Grant's clothes: they are the most likely to fit her. Don't
lose time: I want to see her again before I go."
Kate fished up her charge, all smoking, from the soapsuds
and rubbed her down before the fire. Then the tangled wet hair
was parted evenly and smoothed into dark locks on either side
of her face. Raiment clean, but the coarsest of the coarse, was
found for her. A brown wincey dress surmounted all. Shoes and
stockings came last of all, probably in the order of importance
assigned to them by Kate.
From the arm-chair of the matron's sitting-room Miss
Mackenzie surveyed her charge with satisfaction. Baubie looked
subdued, contented, perhaps grateful, and was decidedly
uncomfortable. Every vestige of the picturesque was gone,
obliterated clean by soap and water, and Kate's hair-comb, a
broken-toothed weapon that had come off second best in its
periodic conflicts with her own barley-mow, had disposed for
ever of the wild, curly tangle of hair. Her eyes had red rims
to them, caused by superfluous soap and water, and in its
present barked condition, when all the dirt was gone, Baubie's
face had rather an interesting, wistful expression. She seemed
not to stand very steadily in her boots, which were much too
big for her.
Miss Mackenzie surveyed her with great satisfaction. The
brown wincey and the coarse apron seemed to her the neophyte's
robe, betokening Baubie's conversion from arab nomadism to
respectability and from a vagabond trade to decorous
industry.
"Now, Baubie, you can knit: I mean to give you needles and
worsted to knit yourself stockings. Won't that be nice? I am
sure you never knitted stockings for yourself before."
"Yes, mem," replied Baubie, shuffling her feet.
"Now, what bed is she to get, Mrs. Duncan? Let us go up
stairs and see the dormitory."
"I thought I would put her in the room with Kate: I changed
the small bed in there. If you will just step up stairs, Miss
Mackenzie?"
The party reached the dormitory by a narrow wooden
staircase, the whiteness of which testified to the scrubbing
powers of Kate's red arms and those of her compeers. All the
windows were open, and the east wind came in at its will,
nippingly cold if airy. They passed through a large,
low-ceilinged room into a smaller one, in which were only four
beds: a small iron stretcher beside the window was pointed out
as Baubie's. Miss Mackenzie turned down the red-knitted
coverlet and looked at the blankets. They were perfectly clean,
like everything else, and, like everything else too, very
coarse and very well worn.
"This will do very nicely.—Baubie, this is to be your
bed."
Baubie, fresh from the lock-up and Kennedy's Lodgings, might
have been expected to show some trace of her sense of
comparison, but not a vestige of expression crossed her face:
she looked up in civil acknowledgment of having heard: that was
all.
"I shall look in again in the course of a week," announced
Miss Mackenzie.—"Good-bye, Baubie: do everything Mrs.
Duncan tells you."
With this valedictory Miss Mackenzie left the matron, and
Kate attended her down stairs; and Baubie was at last
alone.
She remained standing stock-still when they left her by the
bedside—when the door, shut by Kate, who went out last,
hid them from her view. She listened in a stupid kind of way to
the feet tramping on the bare boards of the outer dormitory and
down the stairs: then all was still, and Baubie Wishart, clean,
clothed and separated from her father for the first time in her
life, was left alone to consider how she liked "school." She
felt cold and strange and lonely, and for about three minutes'
space she abandoned herself without reserve to the sensation.
Then the heavy shoes troubled her, and in a fit of anger and
impatience she suddenly began to unlace one. Some far-off sound
startled her, and with a furtive, timorous look at the door she
fastened it up again. No one came, but instead of returning to
the boot she sprang to the window, and, mounting the narrow
sill, prepared to survey the domain that lay below it. There
was not much to see. The window looked out on the back green,
which was very much like the front, save that there was no
flagged walk. A few stunted poplars ran round the walls: the
grass was trodden nearly all off, and from wall to wall were
stretched cords from which fluttered a motley collection of
linen hung out to dry. There was no looking out of it. Baubie
craned her adventurous small neck in all directions. One side
of the back green was overlooked by a tenement-house; the other
was guarded by the poplars and a low stone wall; at the bottom
was a dilapidated outhouse. The sky overhead was all dull gray:
a formless gray sea-mist hurried across it, driven by the east
wind, which found time as well to fill, as it passed, all the
fluttering garments on the line and swell them into ridiculous
travesties of the bodies they belonged to, tossing them the
while with high mockery into all manner of weird
contortions.
Baubie looked at them curiously, and wondered to herself how
much they would all pawn for—considerably more than three
shillings no doubt. She established that fact to her own
satisfaction ere long, although she was no great arithmetician,
and she sighed as she built and demolished an air-castle in her
own mind. Though there was but little attraction for her in the
room, she was about to leave the window when her eye fell on a
large black cat crouched on the wall, employed in surveillance
of the linen or stalking sparrows or in deadly ambush for a
hated rival. Meeting Baubie's glance, he sat up and stared at
her suspiciously with a pair of round yellow, unwinking
orbs.
"Ki! ki! ki!" breathed Baubie discreetly. She felt lonely,
and the cat looked a comfortable big creature, and belonged to
the house doubtless, for he stared at her with an interested,
questioning look. Presently he moved. She repeated her
invitation, whereon the cat slowly rose to his feet, humped his
back and yawned, then deliberately turned quite round, facing
the other way, and resumed his watchful attitude, his tail
tucked in and his ears folded back close, as if to give the
cold wind as little purchase as possible. Baubie felt snubbed
and lonely, and drawing back from the window she sat down on
the edge of her bed to wait events.
Accustomed as she was to excitement, the experiences of the
last few days were of a nature to affect even stronger nerves
than hers, and the unwonted bodily sensations caused by the
bath and change of garments seemed to intensify her
consciousness of novelty and restraint. There was another not
very pleasant sensation too, of which she herself had not taken
account, although it was present and made itself felt keenly
enough. It was her strange sense of desolation and grief at the
parting from her father. Baubie herself would have been greatly
puzzled had any person designated her feelings by these names.
There were many things in that philosophy of the gutter in
which Baubie Wishart was steeped to the lips undreamt of by
her. What she knew she knew thoroughly, but there was much with
which most children, even of her age and class in life, are, it
is to be hoped, familiar, of which Baubie Wishart was utterly
ignorant. Her circumstances were different from
theirs—fortunately for them; and amongst the poor, as
with their betters, various conditions breed various
dispositions. Baubie was an outer barbarian and savage in
comparison with some children, although they perhaps went
barefooted also; but, like a savage too, she would have grown
fat where they would have starved. And this she knew well.
Kate's yellow head, appearing at the door to summon her to
dinner, put an end to her gloomy reverie. And with this, her
first meal, began Baubie's acquaintance with the household of
which she was to form an integral portion from that hour.
They gave her no housework to do. Mrs. Duncan, whom a very
cursory examination satisfied as to the benighted ignorance of
this latest addition to her flock, determined that Baubie
should learn to read, write and sew as expeditiously as might
be. In order that she might benefit by example, she was made to
sit by the lassie Grant, the child whose clothes had been lent
to her, and her education began forthwith.
It was tame work to Baubie, who did not love sitting still:
"white seam" was a vexation of spirit, and her knitting, in
which she had beforehand believed herself an adept, was found
fault with. The lassie Grant, as was pointed out to her, could
knit more evenly and possessed a superior method of "turning
the heel."
Baubie Wishart listened with outward calmness and seeming
acquiescence to the comparison instituted between herself and
her neighbor. Inwardly, however, she raged. What about
knitting? Anybody could knit. She would like to see the lassie
Grant earn two shillings of a Saturday night singing in the
High street or the Lawnmarket. Baubie forgot in her flush of
triumphant recollection that there had always been somebody to
take the two shillings from her, and beat her and accuse her of
malversation and embezzlement into the bargain. Artist-like,
she remembered her triumphs only: she could earn two shillings
by her braced of songs, and for a minute, as she revelled in
this proud consciousness, her face lost its demure, watchful
expression, and the old independent, confident bearing
reappeared. Baubie forgot also in her present well-nourished
condition the never-failing sensation of hunger that had gone
hand in hand with these departed glories. But even if she had
remembered every circumstance of her former life, and the
privations and sufferings, she would still have pined for its
freedom.
The consequence of her being well fed was simply that her
mind was freed from what is, after all, the besetting
occupation of creatures like her, and was therefore at liberty
to bestow its undivided attention upon the restraints and
irksomeness of this new order of things. Her gypsy blood began
to stir in her: the charm of her old vagabond habits asserted
itself under the wincey frock and clean apron. To be commended
for knitting and sewing was no distinction worth talking about.
What was it compared with standing where the full glare of the
blazing windows of some public-house fell upon the Rob Roy
tartan, with an admiring audience gathered round and bawbees
and commendations flying thick? She never thought then, any
more than now, of the cold wind or the day-long hunger. It was
no wonder that under the influence of these cherished
recollections "white seam" did not progress and the knitting
never attained to the finished evenness of the lassie Grant's
performance.
None the less, although she made no honest effort to equal
this model proposed for her example, did Baubie feel jealous
and aggrieved. Her nature recognized other possibilities of
expression and other fields of excellence beyond those afforded
by the above-mentioned useful arts, and she brooded over her
arbitrary and forcedly inferior position with all the intensity
of a naturally masterful and passionate nature. It was all the
more unbearable because she had no real cause of complaint: had
she been oppressed or ill-treated in the slightest degree, or
had anybody else been unduly favored, there would have been a
pretext for an outbreak or a shadow of a reason for her
discontent. But it was not so. The matron dispensed even-handed
justice and motherly kindness impartially all round. And if the
lassie Grant's excellences were somewhat obtrusively contrasted
with Baubie's shortcomings, it was because, the two children
being of the same age, Mrs. Duncan hoped to rouse thereby a
spark of emulation in Baubie. Neither was there any pharisaical
self-exaltation on the part of the rival. She was a
sandy-haired little girl, an orphan who had been three years in
the refuge, and who in her own mind rather deprecated as unfair
any comparison drawn between herself and the newly-caught
Baubie.
Day followed day quietly, and Baubie had been just a week in
the refuge, when Miss Mackenzie, faithful to her promise,
called to inquire how her protégée was getting on.
The matron gave her rather a good character of Baubie.
"She's just no trouble—a quiet-like child. She knows just
nothing, but I've set her beside the lassie Grant, and I don't
doubt but she'll do well yet; but she is some dull," she
added.
"Are you happy, Baubie?" asked Miss Mackenzie. "Will you try
and learn everything like 'Lisbeth Grant? See how well she
sews, and she is no older than you."
"Ay, mem," responded Baubie, meekly and without looking up.
She was still wearing 'Lisbeth Grant's frock and apron, and the
garments gave her that odd look of their real owner which
clothes so often have the power of conveying. Baubie's slim
figure had caught the flat-backed, square-shoulder form of her
little neighbor, and her face, between the smooth-laid bands of
her hair, seemed to have assumed the same gravely-respectable
air. The disingenuous roving eye was there all the time, could
they but have noted it, and gave the lie to her compressed lips
and studied pose.
That same day the Rob Roy tartan frock made its appearance
from the wash, brighter as to hue, but somewhat smaller and
shrunken in size, as was the nature of its material for one
reason, and for another because it had parted, in common with
its owner when subjected to the same process, with a great deal
of extraneous matter. Baubie saw her familiar garb again with
joy, and put it on with keen satisfaction.
That same night, when the girls were going to
bed—whether the inspiration still lingered, in spite of
soapsuds, about the red frock, and was by it imparted to its
owner, or whether it was merely the prompting of that demon of
self-assertion that had been tormenting her of
late—Baubie Wishart volunteered a song, and, heedless of
consequences, struck up one of the two which formed her stock
in trade.
The unfamiliar sounds had not long disturbed the quiet of
the house when the matron and Kate, open-eyed with wonder,
hastened up to know what was the meaning of this departure from
the regular order of things. Baubie heard their approach, and
only sang the louder. She had a good and by no means unmusical
voice, which the rest had rather improved; and by the time the
authorities arrived on the scene there was an audience gathered
round the daring Baubie, who, with shoes and stockings off and
the Rob Roy tartan half unfastened, was standing by her bed,
singing at the pitch of her voice. The words could be heard
down the stairs:
Hark! I hear the bugles sounding: 'tis
the signal for the fight.
Now, may God protect us, mother, as He
ever does the right.
"Baubie Wishart," cried the astonished mistress, "what do
you mean?"
The singer was just at the close of a verse:
Hear the battle-cry of Freedom! how it
swells upon the air!
Yes,
we'll rally round the standard or we'll perish nobly
there.
She finished it off deliberately, and turned her bright eyes
and flushed face toward the speaker.
"Who gave you leave, Baubie Wishart," went on the angry
matron, "to make yon noise? You ought to think shame of such
conduct, singing your good-for-nothing street-songs like a
tinkler. One would think ye would feel glad never to hear of
such things again. Let me have no more of this, do ye hear? I
just wonder what Miss Mackenzie would say to ye!—Kate,
stop here till they are all bedded and turn off yon gas."
Long before the gas was extinguished Baubie had retired into
darkness beneath the bed-clothes, rage and mortification
swelling her small heart. Good-for-nothing street-songs!
Tinkler! Mrs. Duncan's scornful epithets rang in her ears and
cut her to the quick. She lay awake, trembling with anger and
indignation, until long after Kate had followed the younger fry
to rest, and their regular breathing, which her ears listened
for till they caught it from every bed, warned her that the
weary occupants were safely asleep: then she sat up in bed. The
moonlight was streaming into the room through the uncurtained
window, and lit up her tumbled head and hot face. After a
cautious pause she stepped out on the floor and went round the
foot of her bed to the window. She knelt down on the floor, as
if she were in search of something, and began feeling with her
hand on the lower part of the shutter. Then, close to the
floor, and in a place where they were likely to escape
detection, she marked clearly and distinctly eight deep, short
scratches in an even line on the yellow-painted woodwork. She
ran her fingers over them until she could feel each scratch
distinctly. Eight! She counted them thrice to make sure, then
jumped back into bed, and in a few minutes was as fast asleep
as her neighbors.
The days wore into weeks, and the weeks had soon made a
month, and time, as it went, left Baubie more demure, quieter
and more diligent—diligent apparently at least, for the
knitting, though it advanced, showed no sign of corresponding
improvement, and the rest of her work was simply scamped. March
had given way to April, and the late Edinburgh spring at last
began to give signs of its approach. The chestnuts showed brown
glistening tips to their branch-ends, and their black trunks
became covered with an emerald-colored mildew; the rod-like
branches of the poplars turned a pale whitish-green and began
to knot and swell; the Water of Leith overflowed, and ran
bubbling and mud-colored under the bridge; and the grass by its
banks, and even that in the front green of the refuge, showed
here and there a red-eyed daisy. The days grew longer and
longer, and of a mild evening the thrush's note was to be heard
above the brawling of the stream from the thickets of Dean
Terrace Gardens.
Baubie Wishart waited passively. Every day saw her more
docile and demure, and every day saw a new scratch added to her
tally on the window-shutter behind her bed.
May came, and the days climbed with longer strides to their
goal, now close; on reaching which they return slowly and
unwillingly, but just as surely; and to her joy, about, the
third week in May, Baubie Wishart counted one warm, clear night
fifty-nine scratches on the shutter. Fifty-nine! She knew the
number well without counting them.
Whether she slept or watched that night is not known, but
the next morning at four saw Baubie make a hasty and rather
more simple toilette than usual, insomuch as she forgot to wash
herself, brush her hair or put on her shoes and stockings.
Barefooted and bareheaded, much as she had come, she went. She
stole noiselessly as a shadow through the outer dormitory,
passing the rows of sleepers with bated breath, and not without
a parting glance of triumph at the bed where her rival,
Elizabeth Grant, was curled up. Down the wooden stair, her bare
feet waking no echoes, glided Baubie, and into the school-room,
which looked out on the front green. She opened the window
easily, hoisted herself on the sill, crept through and let
herself drop on the grass below. To scramble up the trunk of
one of the chestnuts and swing herself over the wall was
quickly done, and then she was once more on the flagged path of
the street, and the world lay before her.
As she stood for one moment, breathless with her haste and
excitement, she was startled by the sudden apparition of the
house cat, who was on his way home as surreptitiously as she
was on hers abroad. He had one bloody ear and a scratched nose,
and stared at her as he passed: then, probably in the hope of
finding an open door after her, he jumped over the wall
hurriedly. Baubie was seized with a sudden panic lest the cat
should waken some one in the house, and she took to her heels
and ran until she reached the bridge. The morning sun was just
beginning to touch the tall tops of the houses, and the little
valley through which the Water of Leith ran lay still in a kind
of clear grayish light, in which the pale tender hues of the
young leaves and the flowering trees were all the more vividly
beautiful. The stream was low, and it hurried along over its
stony bed, as if it too were running away, and in as great a
hurry to be free of all restraints as truant Baubie Wishart,
whose red frock was now climbing the hilly gray street
beyond.
She could hear, as she strained herself to listen for
pursuing voices, the rustle and murmur of the water with an odd
distinctness as it rose upon the still air of the summer
morning.
Not a creature was to be seen as she made her way eastward,
shaping her course for Princes street, and peering, with a
gruesome fear of the school-board officer, round every corner.
That early bird, however, was not so keenly on the alert as she
gave him the credit of being, and she reached her goal
unchallenged after coasting along in parallel lines with it for
some time.
The long beautiful line of Princes street was untenanted as
the Rob Roy tartan tacked cautiously round the corner of St.
David street and took a hasty look up and down before venturing
forth.
The far-reaching pale red beams of the morning sun had just
touched and kindled as with a flame the summit of the Rock, and
the windows of the Castle caught and flashed back the greeting
in a dozen ruddy reflections. The gardens below lay partly
veiled in a clear transparent mist, faintly blue, that hovered
above the trees and crept up the banks, and over which the
grand outlines of the Rock towered as it lifted its head
majestically into the gold halo that lay beyond.
Not a sound or stir, even the sparrows were barely awake, as
Baubie darted along. Fixing her eye on that portion of the High
School which is visible from Princes street, she pushed along
at a pace that was almost a run, and a brief space saw her draw
up and fall exhausted on the steps that lead up to the Calton
Hill.
Right before her was the jail-gate.
The child's feet, unused now for some time to such
hardships, were hot and bruised, for she had not stopped to
pick her footing in her hasty course, and she was so out of
breath and heated that it seemed to her as if she would never
get cool or her heart cease fluttering as if it would choke
her. She shrank discreetly against the stone wall at her side,
and there for three long hours she remained crouched, watching
and waiting for the hour to chime when the grim black gate
opposite would open.
The last tinge of crimson and purple had faded before the
golden glories of the day as the sun climbed higher and higher
in the serene blue sky. The red cliffs of Salisbury Crags
glared with a hot lustre above the green slopes of the hill,
and in the white dust of the high-road a million tiny stars
seemed to sparkle and twinkle most invitingly to Baubie's eyes.
The birds had long been awake and busy in the bushes above her
head, and from where she sat she could see, in the distant
glitter of Princes street, all the stir of the newly-raised
day.
It was a long vigil, and her fear and impatience made it
seem doubly longer. At last the clock began to chime eight, and
before it was half done the wicket in the great door opened
with a noisy clang after a preliminary rattle.
First came a boy, who cast an anxious look round him, then
set off at a run; next a young woman, for whom another was
waiting just out of sight down the road; last of all (there
were only three released), Baubie, whose heart was beginning to
beat fast again with anxiety, saw the familiar, well-known
figure shamble forth and look up and down the road in a
helpless, undecided way. The next moment the wicket had clapped
to again. Wishart glanced back at it, sighed once or twice, and
blinked his eyes as though the sunlight were too strong for
them.
Baubie, scarce breathing, watched him as a cat watches just
before she springs.
After a second of hesitation he began to move cityward,
obeying some sheep-like instinct which impelled him to follow
those who had gone on before. Baubie saw this, and, just
waiting to let him get well under way and settle into his gait,
she gathered herself up and sprang across the road upon him
with the suddenness and rapidity of a flash.
He fairly staggered with surprise. There she was, exactly as
he had left her, dusty, barefooted and bareheaded. The wind had
tossed up her hair, which indeed was only too obedient to its
will, and it clustered all the more wildly about her face
because of having been cropped to the regulation length of the
refuge.
"Lassie, is't you?" he ejaculated, lost in astonishment.
Then, realizing the fact, he gave expression to his feeling by
grinning in a convulsive kind of way and clapping her once or
twice on the shoulder next him. "Od! I niver! Didna the
leddy—"
Baubie cut him short. "Sed I widna bide," she observed
curtly and significantly.
Gestures and looks convey, among people like the Wisharts,
far more meaning than words, and Baubie's father perfectly
understood from the manner and tone of her pregnant remark that
she had run away from school, and had severed the connection
between herself and the "kind leddy," and that in consequence
the situation was highly risky for both. They remained standing
still for a moment, looking at each other. The boy and the
woman were already out of sight, and the white, dusty high-road
seemed all their own domain.
Wishart shuffled with his feet once more, and looked in the
direction of Princes street, and then at Baubie inquiringly. It
was for her, as usual, to decide. Baubie had been his
Providence for as long as he had memory for—no great
length of time. He was conjecturing in his own mind vaguely
whether his Providence had, by any chance, got the desiderated
three shillings necessary for the redemption of the banjo
hidden away in the Rob Roy tartan. He would not have been
surprised had it been so, and he would have asked no
questions.
Seeing that her eyes followed the direction of his with a
forbidding frown, he said tentatively, "Ye
didn'—didna—"
"What?" snapped Baubie crossly: she divined his meaning
exactly. "Come awa' wi' ye!" she ordered, facing right round
countryward.
"We'll gae awa' til Glasgae, Baubie, eh? I'm thinkin' to yer
auntie's. She"—with a gesture of his head backward
at the prison—"will no' be oot this month; sae she'll
niver need to ken, eh?"
Baubie nodded. He only spoke her own thoughts, and he knew
it.
The first turn to the right past the High School brought
them out on the road before Holyrood, which lay grim and black
under the sun-bathed steeps of Arthur's Seat. On by the Grange
and all round the south-eastern portion of the city this odd
couple took their way. It was a long round, but safety made it
necessary. At last, between Corstorphine's wooded slopes and
the steeper rise of the Pentlands, they struck into the Glasgow
road. In the same order as before they pursued their journey,
Baubie leading as of old, now and again vouchsafing a word over
her shoulder to her obedient follower, until the dim haze of
the horizon received into itself the two quaint figures, and
Baubie Wishart and the Rob Roy tartan faded together out of
sight.
The Author of "Flitters, Tatters and the
Counsellor."