But standing looking at them she knew that she couldn’t, not because she was shamed to speak of such things to either but because they were over-young and happy to have their minds vexed with the dirty sad angers of Miss Ena Lyon, poor lass. She’d never had a soul slip into her room of a night, maybe that was the reason for her awful stamash about Ellen and Ewan exchanging visits…. She’d bade up last night, she had told to Chris, and waited on the stairs to confirm her suspicions. And sure enough it had happened again, oh, Disgusting, at Eleven o’clock Miss Johns slipping into Mr Tavendale’s room. And she couldn’t stay on any longer in a place like this, it was no better than a Brothel, just.

Chris had looked at her in a quiet compassion and said there was no need to stay even a week, she’d better pack and get out at once. Miss Lyon had stared and flushed up raddled red: What, me that’s done nothing? You’ve more need to shift those—

She’d called them a dirty name, Chris had said without anger You’ll pack and be gone in an hour; and left her to that and gone down to the kitchen and shortly afterwards heard a tramping overhead as Miss Lyon got her bit things together—thrown out of her lodgings for trying to keep keelies respectable.

Working in the kitchen with Jock the cat stropping himself up against her legs, Chris had thought that funny for a moment, then it wasn’t, she’d have to ask the two what they meant to do. And she thought how awful it was the rate that things tore on from a body’s vision, only a year or so since she’d thought of Ewan as a little student lad, her own, jealous when he talked to the pussy-cat: and now she’d have to ask him when he meant to marry!

So she’d made the oatcakes and scones all the lodgers cried for, Ake had come swinging in from outbye, out to buy his bit Sunday paper, no collar, his boots well-blacked, his mouser well-curled, he’d sat down and eaten a cake while he read. Chris had brought him some milk though he’d said he’d get it for himself, he’d taken to saying that kind of thing, queer, though she’d paid it little attention, looking at him quiet and friendly, just, this business of getting a job was a trauchle. She’d asked was there any sign of work and he’d said not a bit in the whole of Duncairn, and folded back his paper and looked up at her with green-glinting eyes as he drank his milk! A job? Devil the one. And I’m thinking I know the reason for that.

Chris had asked What reason? and he’d said Jimmy Speight, no doubt he’d sent a message all round Duncairn to the joiners and timber-merchants and such, warning them against employing Ake. Chris had said that surely he’d be feared to do that seeing that Ake knew the scandal about him, Ake had shaken his head, Ay, but he’d promised never to use that knowledge again and Jimmy knew that he’d keep the promise, a body must keep a promise made even to a daft old skate like the Provost.