You were aye Mrs Colquohoun when Meg was about, Ma Cleghorn treating you distant, polite, for the sake of discipline, so she said. You’d gathered the way of setting the table in the big ben room so quick your eyes hardly followed your fingers, porridge plates for Sim Leslie (who’d come from Segget where they’d called him Feet) and Mr George Piddle, the Runner reporter, thin and he-he’ing, minus his hair so that he could go bald-headed for news. Bacon for Miss Murgatroyd and Mr Neil Quaritch: Mr Quaritch worked on the Runner as well, a sub-editor creature, aye reading books and sloshing them to death in the Runner next day. But you rather liked the wee ferret man, red eyes and red hair and a red nose as well, and a straggle of beard on an unhappy chin, Ewan said he’d gone sozzled with reading rot rather than with knocking back gills of Glenlivet…. Mixed grill for Miss Ena Lyon, the typist, powdered and lipsticked, and awful up-to-date, baggy a bittie below the eyes and a voice like a harried peahen, poor lass. Porridge for young Mr Clearmont, nice loon who went to the University and was awful keen on music and jokes, you could never make head nor tail of either as he always guffawed out, young and hearty, right at the point—if there was a point. Ma Cleghorn didn’t think much of him, she said if ever he’d a thought in his head it’d be easy to tell it, you’d hear the damn thing rattling about like a stone in a tin. But she was jealous a bit, you thought, of the lad’s university and books and book-learning…. Bacon for young John Cushnie, all red, the clerk in Raggie Robertson’s Drapery Depot, half-sulky, half-shy and would spend half an hour roping up his neck in a speckled tie, he shared Archie Clearmont’s room but nought else…. Eight o’clock and you hit the gong, breakfast all ready set on the table.

And down they’d all pour and sit in about, Miss Murgatroyd sitting neat as a pin, Such Fine, and eating her grape-fruit up like a sparrow pecking at a bit of dung (you laughed: but you sometimes wished that Ma wouldn’t say those things about folk so often: the picture stuck, true or untrue, and you never saw them in real likeness again); Sergeant Sim Leslie supping his porridge and goggling at you over his collar; Ewan eating quick, clean and indifferent, lost in his thoughts or else in a book, all squiggly lines and figures and drawings; Miss Ena Lyon, complete with complexion, eating her bacon and talking to Clearmont, he’d been to a concert the night before and Miss Lyon was saying she liked music as well—just loved a talkie with a Catchy Choon. Poor Mr Piddle with his long thin neck and his long thin head, as bald as a neep and something the shape, would snap up his meat in a haste to be gone in search of news for the Daily Runner, a fine big paper, the pride of Duncairn, and awful useful for lining your shelves; Cushnie, red-eared and trying to speak English, would call out above the folds of his tie Will ye pass the cruet? I’m in a gey hurry. Me and Mr Robertson have the Spring Sale on; and Mr Neil Quaritch would push down his cup, May I have another, Mrs Colquohoun? he’d left his breakfast untasted as usual.