Like the faint, ill odour of that silent place where they’d ta’en Robert’s body six months before—

She’d thought hardly at all what she would do after Robert’s funeral that so shocked Segget, she’d carried out all the instructions in the will and gone back with Ewan to the empty Manse, Ewan made her tea and looked after her, cool and efficient, only eighteen, though he acted more like twenty-eight—at odd minutes he acted eighty-two she told him as he brought her the tea in the afternoon stillness of the sitting-room.

He grinned the quick grin that was boy-like enough, and wandered the room a bit, tall and dark, unrestlessly, while she drank the tea. He hated tea himself, with a bairn-like liking for bairny things—milk and oatcakes would have contented Ewan from breakfast to dinner and some more for his supper. Ayont the windows in the waning of the afternoon Chris could see the frozen glister of night on the Grampians, swift and near-moving, Ewan’s shoulder and sleekèd dark head against it…. Then he turned from the window. Mother, I’ve got a job.

She’d been sunk in a little drowse of sheer ache, tiredness from the funeral and the day in Duncairn, she woke stupid at his speak and only half-hearing: A job?—who for?

He said Why, for little Ewan Tavendale all by his lone. But you’ll have to sign the papers first.

—But it’s daft, Ewan, you haven’t finished college yet, and then there’s the university!

He shook the sleekèd head: Not for me. I’m tired of college and I’m not going to live off you. And thought for a minute and added with calm sense, Especially as you haven’t much to live off.

So that was that and he fetched the papers, Chris sat and read the dreich things appalled, papers of apprenticeship for four years to the firm of Gowans and Gloag in Duncairn. Smelters and steel manufacturers—But, Ewan, you’d go daft in a job like that.

He said he’d try not to, awfully hard, especially as it was the best job he could come by—and I can come out in weekends and see you quite often. Duncairn’s only a twenty miles off.

—And where do you think I am going to bide?

He looked at her curiously with cool, remote eyes, black didn’t suit him, hair and skin over dark. Eh? Oh, here in Segget, aren’t you? You used to like it before Robert died.

Sense the way he would speak of Robert, not heartlessly, just with indifference, as much as to say what did it matter, would a godly snuffling help Robert now? But a queer curiosity moved Chris to ask Does anything ever matter to you at all, Ewan?

—Oh, lots. Where you’re going to stay, for one thing, when I’ve gone.

He’d slipped out of that well, Chris thought with a twinkle, sitting in the deep armchair on her heels, her head down bent, he ran his finger along the curve of her neck, coolly, with liking, as she looked up at last: