In the first few days you’d been sorry for the lass, Ma Cleghorn treated her worse than dirt, bullying her, sneering at her, upbraiding Almighty God for making such a trauchle to pest decent folk. Syne you saw that Meg, thin, schlimpèd and pert, wasn’t feared a wee bit, sleekèd and sly with a sideways glint in her eyes at Ma, taking her in and her measure unfeared. And Ma that could skin a body alive with her tongue and hang out the hide in the sun to dry wouldn’t send Meg out on a message if it rained, heaped her plate with great helpings at dinner, and when she saw the bit maid over-trauchled with a job would swear at her and go tearing to help…. So you didn’t interfere but got on with your own work, plenty of that—how you’d ached at first afore dinner-time, hungry as you’d never been in a manse: genteel appetite going with all else, walking now with a quick and a hasting step not the long lope that had once been yours, face altering as well from the drowsy mask that had come on you under the yew-trees of Segget—waiting, half-asleep, sitting deep in a chair, for Maidie to bring tea out on the lawn, the peesies flying over Segget blue in smoke, smoke in sun smother, long ago, long ago; and Robert coming striding across the lawn, whistling—and you looked, and he hadn’t a face—

And once Ma came on you as you stood and wept, tearless, sobbing dry-eyed, and stared and knew, shook you and hugged you tight, it hurt: Don’t greet, nothing’s worth it, not a damn thing, no man that ever yet was, Chris! You’d stopped from that daft carry-on at once, shamed of yourself, bothering Ma, weeping like a fool over something as common as kale, losh, weren’t there thousands of widows in the world worse off than you and not snivelling like bairns? And you’d shaken Ma off, gentle as you could: I know. I’m just giving myself a pet. My father would have said it was salts I needed.

Dinner and the feeding of all the faces, funny to think a face was mainly for that; and then out shopping for the morn’s meat. You went down Windmill Steps in the blue Spring air, the grey granite walls rising about you, if the day was clear you’d see below Duncairn spread as a map for show, far off, north-east, the sheen of the Beach beyond the rolling green of the Links, Footforthie a smother of smoke ayont the Docks, the Fish Market and the trawlers’ rig, the Forthie gleaming grey under its brigs. Cleaving the jumble of warrens and wynds went Royal Mile like a south-driven sword, to the left the new biggings of Ecclesgriegs, Town Hall and courts and Thomson Tower, the Tangleha’ trees that hid the University, the gentry’s quarters, genteel Craigneuks—to the right in jumbles around Grand Central the Cowgate and Gallowgate, Paldy Parish, and far off in the west beyond Footforthie the fishers’ wee toun, called Kir-riebem.