Taking up tea to Ma Cleghorn next morning Chris found the meikle creature already out of bed, getting into her stays like wool into a bottle. God, Chris, just give a pull at they points, I’m getting a wee bittie stout, I’m half-feared.

Chris put down the tray and pulled at the tapes, the house a drowse in the Saturday quiet, she asked why Ma’d got up so early, and Ma asked if she’d forgotten the new lodger-lassie, was Chris herself to do all the work? Chris said Well, unless she’s so awful big, she’ll make no difference to me, I hope. What’s she like? and Ma gave a bit of a snort: A stuck-up looking bitch from a school in Dundee. Schlimpèd and English and thin as a sparrow, I never could abide the stuck-up kind. Chris said Some folk say that I’m stuck up, Ma said So you are, and so’s your bit Ewan. I’ll maybe thole two of you about the house but I’ll be danged to a cinder-ash afore I bear with another of the brew…. Och, lassie, go away, I’m in bad tune this morning. Take the teacher creature her cup of tea.

So Chris did, and went up and knocked, a cool voice said Come in, in she went, the lassie lying in the double bed Chris and Ma Cleghorn had put up yestreen, window wide open, curtains flying, Chris lowered her eyes to the quean herself and saw her trig, neat, in a flowered nightie, slim like a boy, like Ewan almost, short black hair and blue deep eyes, great pools going down into darkness. She sat up and took the cup and nodded: You Mrs Cleghorn’s partner?

Chris knew for certain then what was wrong, the English lass was shy as could be but carrying it off with a brassy front, the kind of cool courage Chris always had liked. And as Chris smiled the brassiness went, the quean flushed sweet as they looked at each other, was suddenly neat and demure and forlorn, no more; like a prize pussy-cat, Chris thought, with that faint line of down on her upper lip that one liked the look of, most folk didn’t.—I’m Mrs Colquohoun and you’re Miss Johns.

—I say, you’re different from what I expected.

—You’re a wee bittie different yourself, Chris said, and carried down the tray and went on with her work, nice to have had a nice quean like that for one’s own sometime: as well as had Ewan. But that was just dreaming—she wouldn’t have been one’s own any more than was Ewan, the pussy-cat, wave of nice black hair by her smooth, soft cheek and that funny down and that youngness—oh, but they made one feel like an old trauchled wife, the young folk here in Duncairn!

And suddenly, washing the breakfast things, there came a waft of stray wind through the window, a lost wean of the wind that had tint itself in play in the heights of the summer Mounth, Chris nearly dropped the cup she was drying. Ma Cleghorn louped: Steady on, lass! Mighty be here, have you seen a ghost?