At six you were up at Ma Cleghorn’s room with a cup of tea and a knock at her door and go in and draw back the window-curtains, let up the blinds, bang! She’d wake up and groan Is’t you, Chris lass? Losh, you spoil me, just, she meant the tea, and you’d say Oh, havers, she spoke Duncairn and you’d got the same gait. And Ma Cleghorn would give another bit groan and drink up the tea and loup from the bed, swack as you like, an old woman only a minute afore but filled now with tea and a fury to work. The Bulgars’ll soon be on the howl for their meat. Whatever made me take to the keeping of lodgings?

You’d say A BOARDING-HOUSE, please, Mrs Cleghorn, one of the jokes that the two of you shared, Ma’d give a great snifter through her meikle nose: Boarding? B’God, it’s leathering they want. And I haven’t a pair of bloomers to my name that’s not darned so a body can hardly sit down. I’ve a fair bit padding of my own to ease it, you haven’t, get out of the damn trade, lass, afore you’re like me and take to bloomers instead of them frilly things you wear—God be here, they’ll kill you yet dead with cold. Aren’t your legs froze?

You’d say Not them; fine legs, and Ma struggling into her blouse would say You’re no blate. Who told you they’re fine? And you’d say Oh, men, and she’d nod to that, great red face topped with greying hair like the face of a war-horse out of Isaiah (as you’d once thought, minding back through the months to Robert’s reading from the Bible in Segget).—Ay, no doubt they have, and enjoyed them fine. And would again if you gave them the chance.

Syne you’d to tear to the kitchen again, in time for the ring from Miss Murgatroyd’s room, dying for her tea the poor old wretch, solemn you’d carry it up to her room, the best in the house, three guineas a week. She’d quaver out of a lace nightcap: Is that you, Mrs Colquohoun? And you have my tea? Oh, that’s Such Fine, she was awful genteel, poor spinster body with her pensions and potterings, not a soul in the world hers and respectable down to her shrivelled toes, wabbling hands and meek quiet eyes, Episcopalian, serving tea for the whist drives up at the Unionist Club…. And Ma Cleghorn, watching her taik down the street, would ask who in God’s name would be an old maid? She’d often used to think when her Jim was alive and would come back from the Fish Market stinking so bad that his shirts hung out on a washing day would bring the cats scraiching for miles around—she’d used often to think I wish I were single, trig on my own, not handled, not kenned, with nobody’s seed ever laid in me! But losh, when he died she had minded him sore, night on night and would fain have had him again though he smelt like a kipper mislaid in a drain when he’d cuddle you, feuch! They were sosses, were men, but you’d only to look at the Murgatroyd creature to make you mad to go tearing out and grab the first soss that you met in breeks—Half-past six, Chris; will you waken your Εwan?