Ay, Mrs Colquohoun, you look bonny as ever. And Chris said that was fine, but why was he carrying the kist? The cabman would surely have given him a hand. And Ake said he’d just had an argy with the billy and sent him off with a flea in his lug, by God he’d wanted a whole half-crown for bringing them up from the Central Station.

Chris said that was awful, cabmen were like that, but Ake wouldn’t be able to carry up the kist on his shoulder further, the stairs drew in. So he lowered it down and syne shook hands and looked her all over with his swagger green glower. Ay, you’ve fairly ta’en with Duncairn. D’you miss the Manse? Chris said Not much. Shall I give you a hand?

Ake looked a bit doubtful, he thought of her still as the wife of Robert in Segget, she saw, genteel and neat and fine and frail—she said Come on! and took hold of an end and Ake did the same, up they went to his room, made ready, and put down the kist in the corner for’t. Syne Ake looked round and out at the roofs: A hell of a place for a man to bide, the toun, though the room looks canty enough. You’ll be gey busy here, no doubt then, mistress?

Chris nearly cuddled him, calling her that, so long since a soul had called her mistress: I’ve a lot to do, same as other folk. But we’ll have a crack on Segget some time.—Ay, faith we will. He had turned away, no frills or unnecessary politeness with him: I’ll be in to my tea, but not to my dinner. I’ve to gang up and see the Provost man.

Chris said that she hoped he’d get on fine, and he said No fear of that. Ta-ta.

He made himself at home from the first, sitting arguing in the sitting-room with Mr Neil Quaritch, thin, with his little tuft of a beard and his Douglas Scheme (that Ewan called the Bourgeois Funk-Fantasy), Ake beside him looking like a shorthorn bull taking up its spare time on a gossip with a goat. He looked over-real sometimes to Chris to be real as she’d meet him coming in at the door, slow and yet quick, throwing down his feet with a fine and measured stride, the earth’s his, yielding the wall to none in Duncairn. And he’d clump up the stairs and into his room without a sideways look or a thought, he’d paid his fee and the room was his, would he creep up quiet for any damned body?

Chris never saw him at ease in his room. Rousing the first morning after he came she’d thought to make him a cup of tea and take it to him the same as to others. But while she was moving about with the cups and the kettle was singing and Jock the cat purring away for dear life by the range and the caller air of the August dawn coming up the Steps and into the house, she heard a pad of feet on the stairs, and there was Ake at the kitchen door, his mouser fresh-curled, in his waistcoat and breeks, no slippers, his kind never did have slippers Chris minded back to her farmhouse days: Ay, mistress, I thought it would maybe be you. This’ll be your kitchen place, no doubt. Chris said it was—Come in and sit down.