Robert once had had with his Socialism. And looking around that evil place in the stew of the hottering rising June she minded that verse he’d once quoted in Segget, long ago in that other life:

Stone hearts we cannot waken

Smite into living men:

Jehovah of the thunders

Assert Thy power again!

And dimly she thought that maybe that was what the Covenanters had believed when they faced the gentry in the old-time wars. Only God never came and they died for Him and the old soss went on as it always would do, aye idiot folk to take dirty lives and squat in the dirt, not caring a lot were they letten a-be to rot as they liked. No concern of hers—she belonged to herself as Ewan had told her he belonged to himself, she’d have hated the Covenant giving her orders as much as she’d have hated its enemies, the gentry.

… And all far off from a middle-aged wife looking for a missing maidie, Meg. Where was it Ma said the creature bade?

She found it at last, a deep narrow court, used to the smells she went in and up the stone stairs, chapped at the door and waited and listened. In a tenement near a row was on, furniture crashing, Chris heard a woman scraich and grew white to the lips. Syne she heard a loud voice raised in a hymn:

Count your blessings, name them one by one,

Count your blessings, see what God has done,

Count your blessings, name them one by one

And it will surprise you what the Lord has done.

There followed a final thump on that, somebody cried I’ll ha’e the bobbies on you, and then a door banged: and then a loud silence.

Chris chapped again, heard a noise inside, the door opened, she said: Is Meg Watson in?

The man who opened the door was the same who’d once stopped her in the Upper Cowgate and asked her for sixpence.

They both stared like gowks a minute, speechless, he’d shaved and wore a second-hand suit, over-big for him, bulging at paunch and bottom, the thin brown face didn’t look so starved, cocky and confident till he met her eyes. Now he flushed dark and licked his lips:

Meg Watson’s gone off to look for a job.

Chris nodded. I see. Will you tell her I want to know why she left me? My name is Mrs Colquohoun and if she comes back the morn you can tell her that I’ll say nothing about it.

… So that was who the sulky bitch was, boorjoy and stuck-up—he’d heard the tale, Alick had sloshed her son down at Gowans. A stuck-up toff, he’d said; like the mother, damn her and her glower and her ice-brick eyes.

Meg was feared to go back when she heard from her brother he’d bashed your son in a bit fight at the Works.

Chris said I see. Well, she needn’t be, and turned and went down the stairs, stare on her back; turned again: I think you owe me a sixpence.