You told the queans that but they didn’t listen, they were giggling horrified to each other again, your quean said What, did you really hear the bed creak? and Miss Lyon said Yes, twice, and their faces were all red and warmed up and glinting, they minded you suddenly of the faces of two bitches sniffling round a lamp-post, scared and eager and hot on a scent…. But you mustn’t think that, they were real genteel.

For your quean was the daughter of a bank-clerk in Aberdeen and Miss Ena Lyon’s father had been a postmaster, some class, you guessed, you didn’t much like to tell them yours had been only the hostler at the Grand Hotel, what did it matter, you were middle-class yourself now and didn’t want ever to remember that you might have been a keelie labourer—Christ, living in some awful room in Paldy, working at the Docks or the granite-yards, going round with some quean not genteel like yours but speaking just awful, Scotch, no restraint or knowing how to take care of herself, maybe coming into your bed at night, smooth and fine and kissing you, cuddling you, holding you without screaming, just in liking and kindness…. Your quean asked Whatever’s come over you, red like that? and you said Oh, nothing, it’s stuffy in here.

And home you all went on the evening tram, your quean and Miss Lyon sitting together and your quean telling Miss Lyon what fine digs she had, the landlady so respectful, a perfect old scream: and Ena should wait about tonight and catch the two Reds and show them up, and then leave the place and come bide with your quean.

And Miss Lyon said that she would, too, she was sick of the place, anyhow—the dirty beasts to act like that, night after night…. And they giggled and whispered some more and for some funny reason you felt as though you’d a stone in your gall, sick and weary, what was the use?—what was the use of being middle-class and wearing a collar and going to the Talkies when this was all that you got out of it? And your quean, whispering some direction to Miss Lyon, turned round and said Don’t listen a minute, and you nearly socked her one in the jaw—och, ’twas the summer night’s heat that was getting you.

Chris’s roses were full and red in bloom, scentless and lovely, glowing alive in the Sunday sun as she herself came out to the little back garden. Εwan and Ellen were out there already, their backs to the house, one kneeling one standing, their dark hair blue in the sunlight, young, with a murmur of talk and laughter between them. And she saw indeed they were children no longer, Ellen a woman, slim, a slip of a thing, but that pussy-cat dewiness lost and quite gone, Ewan with the stance and look and act of some strange species of Gallowgate keelie who had never hidden or starved in a slum and planned to cut all the gentry’s throat, politely, for the good of humankind…. And Miss Ena Lyon was no doubt right in all she had said: Chris must tell them somehow.