Alick Watson said that his Ma’s new lodger, a chap called Selden, and he was a Red, was aye saying the unions should chuck out the leaders. And everybody laughed, you knew well enough what Reds were like, daft about Russia and its Bolshevists—tink brutes, it made you boil to think the way they mis-used the ministers there, the Daily Runner had pages about it and the Pope had been in a hell of a rage at atheists behaving near as bad as Christians.

And you all sat by the Docks, you’d go down there now and look at the two or three ships in the harbour sleeping an hour in the still July, smoke a slow pencil plume from the derricks, a dead cat or so floating under your feet, far off through the brigs you could see the North Sea fling up its green hands again and again and grab and scrabble at the breakwater wall—and you blethered about everything you could think of, Ewan wouldn’t talk much unless Alick made him, Alick’d slap him on the shoulder, Come on, man, tell us. But he’d say I don’t know any more than you chaps—less, it’s only stuff out of books.

Well, wasn’t that a lot? And you’d ask him about it, did he hold with this ongoing of the Bolshevists in Russia, closing down kirks and chasing ministers all to hell for just preaching, like? He said he didn’t know anything about Russia but he thought the time of kirks was past. But you surely believe there’s Something, man? and Ewan said Maybe, but I don’t think it’s God.

And you couldn’t make out what he meant by that, funny chap, fine chap, you liked to go home with him, he called you Bob as you called him Ewan, and was awfully interested in everything, where you’d been born, and gone to school, and the stuff they’d taught you in Ecclesgriegs. And you felt a bit shy to invite him, like, the old man’s house was a hell of a soss, but you’d like him to tea some Saturday night. And he said Right, thanks. I’d like to come; and you went home and maybe boasted a bit till your sister, the silly bitch, said Tavendale: isn’t that the toff that you couldn’t stick?

And out of the fragments of days and nights Chris saw her life shape to a pattern again. Getting up and working and going to bed—it had never been anything else in a way she thought as she scrubbed the floors, tidied the rooms, and helped Ma Cleghorn cook the meals or young Meg Watson wash up at the sink. Meg had come back and was fair subdued, looking at Chris with a frightened eye, afraid, poor lass, she’d be somehow blamed over that fight at Gowans and Gloag’s. But Chris wasn’t so daft as pay heed to that, Ewan could heed to himself, she thought, he was growing up with his own life to lead. And she had hers, and sleep, and food, work, and meikle Ma Cleghorn to laugh at—and what else was there a body could want?