Cleaver's boy could do any amount of this kind of thing. He modelled himself upon the popular broadsheet of the day. But it was not popular in the Sooth Back. The article in demand there was a song about a little child who softly faded away after bidding farewell—a long farewell, to all his friends so dear—in a verse apiece. Like King Charles, this boy was quite an unconscionable time a-dying. But he did not know it. He was a popular boy in the Sooth Back, and Tam Luke warbled about him till the assembled Knuckle Dusters snivelled secretly, and looked hard down between their knees so as to pretend they were spitting on the floor. But Cleaver's boy, who in early youth had come from Blackburn with his father, the slaughterman, said it was "Bully-rot!" He swore that he could make a song about Sal Mackay that would be worth a shopful of such "tripe." The verse quoted above is part of the song he made. Cleaver's boy has repeated the whole poem to me more than once, but the above is all that I can bring myself to print. For Sal Mackay has able-bodied relatives, and, besides, there is a law of libel in this country, which is provided for in my agreement with my publishers.

Sal Mackay and Susy Murphy were rivals in the affections of the handsome "boy" of Cleaver the butcher. But for long the swain was coy and gave no final evidence of preference. So that day by day in the factory where they worked side by side, neither could exult over the other.

"Ye needna think he cares a buckie for you, ye tow-headed, crawlin' ferlie!" said Sue, who was of the dark allure, to Sal who was fair.

"He wadna look the road ye are on, ye ill-grown, cankered-faced, jaundice hospital!" was the retort elegant of Sal Mackay.

So it happened nightly that when Celie Tennant was at the most impressive portions of the Scripture lesson, or engaged in elucidating the mysteries of compound division (and pardonably getting a little tangled among the farthings), that there would come a long whistle at the door, and then a smart rapping at the window. Another blast like a steamer signal was blown before the dark tower, the Knuckle Dusters would throw their heads back to laugh, and then look at Cleaver's boy. He would stand it a little while, and then, to escape from their meaning looks, he would throw down his slate and books and go quietly out at the door.

At last Celie plucked up courage to speak to him.

"It is not so much that I mind," said Celie, for she had been learning many things since she came down to the Sooth Back, things that she did not mention when she went home to Aurelia Villa, or even repeat to the Junior Partner.

"It is not that I mind so much myself," she said, "but it is a very bad example for Cleg and the younger boys."

"I ken, I ken, but faith, I canna help it, Miss Celie," said Cleaver's boy, in desperation. "As sure as daith, it is no my faut. Thae twa lasses will juist no let me alane. I canna gang alang the street for them."

And Celie, blushing for her sex, believed him and condoled. For, next to Cleg, she had a weakness for Cleaver's boy. He was so good-looking.

"Wait till they come the nicht!" said Cleaver's boy, darkly.

It was the hour of the vesper writing lesson. Cleaver's boy was seated at the long desk which Mr. Donald Iverach had found, as he said, "about the premises"—but for which he had, curiously enough, previously paid out of his own pocket. Cleaver's boy had his head close down to the paper. His elbows were spread-eagled over the table. His shoulders were squared with determination, and his whole pose gave token of the most complete absorption and studious intentness. He was writing the line, "Kindness to dumb animals is a sign of nobility of character." As his pen traced the curves, his tongue was elaborating the capitals, so exactly that you could almost tell by watching the tip whether Cleaver's boy was writing a K or an N. This kind of expressive caligraphy has not been sufficiently studied. But Cleaver's boy was undoubtedly a master of it.

There came angry voices at the door.

"What are you doin' here? I tell ye he's my chap!" said a voice sharp and shrill.

"It's a black lee. I tell ye he's naething o' the kind!" said another, yet louder and rougher.

Sue Murphy and Sal Mackay were at it again. So said the Society of the Knuckle Dusters as it winked amicably and collectively to itself. Celie Tennant was just looking over the copybook of Cleaver's boy. As she stood behind him, she could see the scarlet swiftly rising to his neck and brow. Adonis was becoming distinctly annoyed. It was going to be a rough night for Venuses.

"I tell ye it was only on Saturday nicht that he knocked my bonnet off my head an' kickit it alang the street—an' ye will hae the impidence to say after that that he is your lad!"

It was the voice of Sue Murphy which made this proud declaration.

"That nocht ava', ye Irish besom," retorted Sal Mackay; "yestreen nae farther gane, he pu'ed a handfu' o' the hair oot o' my heid. Aye, and rubbit my face wi' a clabber o' glaur, forbye!"

It was the last straw. Cleaver's boy rose to his feet with a look of stern and righteous determination on his face. The assembled Knuckle Dusters watched him eagerly. Celie stood aghast, fearing that murder might be done, in the obvious endeavour Cleaver's boy was now about to make, to excel all his previous records in the art of love-making, as practised in the Sooth Back and the Tinklers' Lands.

He walked slowly to the corner of the store room, where on a little bench stood two very large water cans of tin, painted a dark blue. They were the property of the club and contained the drinking water for the evening. They had just been filled.

Cleaver's boy took one in his hand and opened the door. Then he swung the heavy can, and tilting it up with the other hand, he arched the contents solidly and impartially upon the waiting Juliets. Returning, he seized the other, and from the shrieking down the passage it was obvious to Celie, that he had been equally successful in cooling the ardour of the rivals with that.

Cleaver's boy came back with the empty cans in his hand, panting a little as with honest toil, but there was no shamefacedness in his eyes now. He looked straight at Celie like a man who has done his full duty, and perhaps a little over.

"I pit it to yoursel', Miss Celie, can a man do mair than that?"

And with no further word, Cleaver's boy dusted the drops from the knees of his breeches, and sat down to write six more lines of "Kindness to dumb animals is a sign of nobility of character."

But next night he came to Celie in the blackness of despair.

"I will hae to resign, after all, Miss Celie," he said, "I canna bide here to be a disgrace to ye a'."

"Why, what's the matter, James?" said Miss Tennant, who did not yet know everything; "are the girls going to prosecute you in the police court for throwing the water over them last night?"

Cleaver's boy opened his mouth in astonishment and kept it so for some time.

"Prosecute me?—I wish to peace they wad!" cried he, after he got his breath. "Na, faith, Miss Celie; will ye believe me, they are fonder o' me than ever. They were baith waitin' for me at the stairfit this mornin' when I cam doon to gang to the shop."

And Miss Celie again believed him.

ADVENTURE XXI.
AN IDYLL OF BOGIE ROLL.

At last he dashed his hand against his thigh with a cry of joy, and fell to dancing a hobnailed fandango in the gutter.

"Dod, man, the verra thing," he said; "I'll toss for them!"

So with that Cleaver's boy took out his lucky penny, and, selecting a smooth space of the unpaved roadway of a new street, where the coin would neither stick edgeways nor yet bounce unfairly on the stones, he spun the coin deftly upwards from his level thumb-nail.

"Heads Sall—tails Susy!" he said, very solemnly, for his life was in the twirl of the penny.

"Heads she is—Sal has got me!" exclaimed the ardent lover.

They were engaged that night. The next day they were photographed together—Sal with a very large hat, a great deal of hair, and a still larger amount of feather; Cleaver's boy with a very small hat, an immense check suit, and a pipe stuck at a knowing angle with the bowl turned down. That same night Sal had still a lover, indeed, but the glory of her betrothal attire was no more. Her hat was a mere trampled ruin. Her fringe was patchy. She had a black eye; and all that remained of Susy Murphy was in the lock-up for assault and battery. Without doubt it was a stirring time for James Annan, and it is to be feared that Mr. Cleaver and his customers did not get quite their fair share of his attention while it lasted.

Susy Murphy got off under the First Offenders Act. But immediately upon re-encountering her successful rival she incontinently became a second offender, and was as summarily fined thirty shillings or seven days. And it added to the bitterness of Cleaver's boy, that he had to come good for both the hat ruined in the first battle and the dress torn to shreds in the second.

Then it also became his duty to take out Miss Mackay every evening, and so frequent were the demands upon his purse, that Cleaver's boy perceived that nothing but marriage stood between him and financial ruin.

"If I was only marriet," he soliloquised, "I could stop the lemonades and ice-creams. They're juist terrible expensive. I declare Sal thinks naething o' a dozen bottles. And gin ye stickit a preen until her ony gate, I declare she wad fizz."

It occurred to him, however, that as a temporary alternative it might be possible to increase his earnings. And Cleaver's boy was not above asking for what he wanted.

"Guid jobs wants finding nooadays!" was a favourite expression of his.

Now there was a certain Bailie Holden among the customers of Mr. Cleaver. This dignitary had succeeded to the responsible position of Convener of the Cleaning and Lighting department—a division of the city's municipal business which has always been associated with excellent eating and drinking, and a good deal of both.

Bailie Holden had the finest taste in the light wines of his country of any man on the council. In his happier moments of inspiration he could tell the age of Long John to within a year. Now Bailie Holden had, among other excellent domestic properties, a kitchen-maid who was not above casting soft eyes at spruce James Annan of Cleaver's, so débonnaire, with his blue apron and his basket over his arm. And James had cultivated the acquaintance according to his opportunity, without, of course, thinking it necessary to say anything to Sal Mackay—or, for the matter of that, to Sue Murphy either. So that, in the course of conversation at the area door, it fell out that Cleaver's boy mentioned his desire to be no more Cleaver's boy, but a servant of the city corporation in the department of Cleaning and Lighting. And the kitchen-maid answered, keeping her eyes on James and adjusting her tumbled cap at the same time—

"I'll speak to the maister when he comes through the back kitchen, to smoke his pipe in the yaird after dinner-time."

For it was the use and wont of Bailie Holden, when he was without company, or could shunt the entertainment of it upon his wife, to put on a seedy garden coat and slip off quietly round by the greenhouses. Here he took from the edge of a heating tube a short clay pipe of excessive blackness; then from a canister he extracted a snaky twist of Bogie roll. Bailie Holden was renowned for keeping the best cigars in the city, and he also smoked them regularly indoors. His wife, indeed, did not allow anything else. But he came outside for his real smoke, in his shirt-sleeves in the warm evenings, and in his garden coat when it was colder. For though to all men he was now Havanna of the most exclusive brand, and all his appointments like unto that dignity, yet at the heart of him he was still kindly Bogie roll.

The Bailie thought on many things out there in the dark as he nuzzled down the glowing ash in the pipe-bowl close under his nose. He thought, for instance, of the year Elizabeth and he were married, when they started at the foot of Morrison Street in one room at the back of the gasfitter's shop. They did not keep a servant then, and Elizabeth had not yet learned to object to the smoking of Bogie roll. Indeed, her father and her three brothers (all honest masons) incessantly smoked nothing else. But when there was need to find a place in the little back-room for another person with no experience in Bogie roll where he came from, then the Bailie had gone out every night to the backyard, sat down on a roll of lead piping and smoked a black pipe, with a babe's little complainings tugging at his heart all the while. And the memory of the Bogie roll outside the window, across which the black shadows went and came, had somehow kept his heart warm all through the years.

And, strange it is to say it, but though he was in many ways a difficult man to serve, yet many a servant had remained another term, simply because the master slipped out to take his smoke away from every one in the evening. This is the whole idyll of the life of Bailie Holden, Convener of the Committee on Cleaning and Lighting and proximate Lord Provost of the city. It is curious that it should be an idyll of Bogie roll.

ADVENTURE XXII.
THE SEDUCTION OF A BAILIE.

"But," said Janet, the kitchen-maid, "this is a very nice young man. You may have seen him, sir. He comes here twice every day from Mr. Cleaver's, the butcher's, sir."

"No, Janet," replied the Bailie, amicably, "I do not know that I have observed him. You see, my duties do not compel me to be cleaning the kitchen steps when nice young men come from Cleaver's!"

"Sir," said Janet, with a little privileged indignation, "James Annan, sir, is a most respectable young man."

"And he asked you to speak to me?"

"Oh no, sir! Indeed, no, sir! But I thought, sir, that in your department you might have need of a steady young man."

"I have, indeed, Janet. You are as right as ever you will be in your life," said the Convener of Cleaning and Lighting, thinking of the ravages which the traditional hospitality of the department sometimes made among his steadiest young men.

"What are his desires, Janet?" said the Bailie; "does he want a chief inspectorship, or will he be content to handle a broom?"

"Oh, not an inspectorship—at first, sir. And he can handle anything, indeed, sir," said Janet, breathlessly, for the Convener had endued himself with his coat and showed signs of moving gardenwards.

"Including your chin, my dear," said the Bailie, touching (it is very regrettable to have to state) one of Janet's plump dimples with the action which used fifty years ago to go by the name of "chucking." He had dined, his wife was safely up stairs out of harm's way, and Bogie roll glowed cloudily before him. Let these be his excuses.

"James Annan, nor no one else, has more to do with my chin than I like to let them, sir," said Janet, who came from Inverness, and had a very clear idea of business.

The Bailie laughed and went out.

"I will bear it in mind, Janet," said he, for he felt that he was wasting time. He did not mean Janet's dimpled chin.

"Better put it down in your notebook—I'll fetch it, sir!" And Janet promptly fetched a black leather case, round-shouldered with importance and bulgy with business.

So the Bailie stood in the half-light which came from the kitchen window, and wetted the stub of a lead-pencil, which Janet had carried for years in the pocket of her working-dresses without ever needing it. He hesitated what to write.

"The young man's name, sir, is James Annan, and you can send the letter in care of me, sir," said Janet, with a subtle suggestiveness. She tiptoed round till she touched his sleeve, so as to look over at what he was writing.

"Thank you, Janet; anything else?" asked the Bailie.

"No, sir," said Janet, hesitating with her finger at her lip, "unless, sir, you could think to put him on this district."

So it happened that in due time Mr. Cleaver lost the services of Cleaver's boy. These valuable assets were simultaneously gained by the city corporation in the department of Cleaning and Lighting. This has been the immemorial method in which subordinate positions have been filled, according to the best traditions of the municipal service. The great thing is, of course, to catch your convener, as it were, between dinner and Bogie roll.

James Annan was placed on the southern district, and his duty was to mark in a notebook, less important but a good deal cleaner than the Bailie's, the names of the streets which were attended to in their order, and also the exact moment when each final ash-backet was heaped upon the cart.

What precise benefit trim Janet of Inverness got from the arrangement is not clear. For, being occupied during the night, Cleaver's boy could no more come for the orders early in the morning, nor yet trot whistling down the area steps an hour later with the laden basket upon his arm. So that Janet, supposing the matter interested her at all, seemed definitely to be the loser.

Yet one never knows. For the ways of girls from Inverness are deep as the sea is deep in the unplumbed places in the middle, which are painted the deepest indigo on the atlases. James Annan continued to be called Cleaver's boy, in spite of the fact that a successor at six shillings a week had been appointed, who now wore Cleaver's boy's discarded blue aprons. In other ways he would have been glad to succeed to the perquisites of Cleaver's boy. But he was a sallow-faced youth with straight hair, who used his tobacco without the aid of a pipe. So Janet did not deign to bandy a single word with the new boy. He was no more than a penny-in-the-slot machine, wound up to deliver so many pounds of steak every day. The kitchen steps were now always cleaned in the early dawn, and Janet went about in her old wrapper all the morning and most of the afternoon.

She had taken a saving turn, she said, as if it had been the measles. It was all very well for the table-maid always to wear a black frock.

But though she saw less of Cleaver's boy (the original and only genuine article), it is possible, and indeed likely, that Janet of Inverness knew more of the romance of Susy and Sal than Cleaver's boy gave her credit for. Let those who try to run three or four love affairs abreast, like horses in a circus ring, take warning. Janet of Inverness had never heard of either Sal or Susy from the lips of Cleaver's boy. Nevertheless, there was not much of importance to her schemes which was not familiar to the wise little head set upon the plumply demure shoulders of Janet of Inverness.

ADVENTURE XXIII.
THE AMOROUS ADVENTURES OF A NIGHT-SHIFT MAN.

Sal came home from the mill at six. James went on duty at eight. Consequently it was now usually about seven when James called. It was an unhappy and ill-chosen time, as anybody but a man would have known. For Sal appeared to be in some undress, and was indeed engaged in frizzling her front hair with a pair of hot knitting needles, occasionally burning her fingers and her forehead in the process.

"Hoo are ye the nicht, Sal?" said James, standing at the cheek of the door and crossing his legs comfortably. Someone (he forgot who) had told him he looked well that way.

"Naething the better for seein' you!" retorted Sal over her shoulder. She never took her eyes off the fragment of mirror which was secured to the wall by two long nails and the broken end of another knitting needle.

"Wy Sal, what's wrang wi' ye?" began Cleaver's boy, anxiously. For though in the affairs of men, as between boy and boy, his voice was most for open war, yet in the things of love he liked peace and sacrificed much to secure it.

Sal humped up the shoulder next him and turned sharply away from him with a gesture indicative of the greatest disdain—without, however, taking her eyes from the faint blue smoke which went up from the left side of her fringe, to which she had at that moment applied a fresh pair of red-hot knitting needles.

"Tell me what's the maitter wi' ye, Sal," said James humbly. For the spirit seemed to have departed out of him.

Sal tossed her head and made a sound which, though inarticulate, indicated that much might be said upon that subject. She could and she would.

Slowly Cleaver's boy extracted from his pocket a neat parcel done up in paper.

"Hae, Sal!" he said, going forward to her elbow and offering them to her; "hae, here are some sweeties I fetched ye."

They were her favourite brandy-balls, and on a suitable day, with a light wind and strong sun, their perfume carried a quarter of a mile. James had never known them fail of their effect before. But now, with a swift half-turn, Sal snatched them out of his hand and flung them behind the fire. Cleaver's boy stood aghast. They had cost him fourpence-halfpenny at Tam Luke's shop, and would have cost twice as much but for Tam's good offices in the weighing department.

"What's wrang wi' the brandy-balls, Sal?" he cried in despair. The like of this had never happened before in his experience. Thus Time works out its revenges.

"Did ye get them oot o' an ash-backet?"[4] at last cried Sal, breaking her indignant silence.

"No," said innocent James, "I got them at Tam Luke's for fourpence-halfpenny."

"So ye say!" returned Sal, who was determined not to be appeased.

The brandy-balls were now flaming up the chimney, and fast dissolving into their elements with a sickly smell and a fizzling noise.

"Tell us what ye hae against us, Sal; oot wi' it!" said Cleaver's boy, who recognised the great truth that with a woman it is always better to be at the bottom of what she knows, and that at once.

"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.

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.

"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.

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.