IV

When the girls left Nilsson’s together, they walked westwards along Sauchiehall Street, looking at the milliners’ windows and talking mostly about what they saw there. But under all they said there was a happy excitement. “We are going to be friends!” each kept thinking with delight. Now and again Joanna stole a look at Phemie, and with every look she found new pleasure in the valiant little profile. And Phemie was impressed and carried away by something in the other that she could not define to herself. “A real, wee madam”! was how she would describe Joanna to her sisters when she got home.

But she had a disclosure to make before she could be sure of this new friendship, and as they turned the crowded corner into Renfield Street she came out with it.

“Shall I take you in to the business?” she asked, watching the other’s face keenly. “Mamma will likely be gone, but Annie and Florrie should still be there; and young Nora might be in, meeting them.”

Joanna said she would like to be taken, and wanted to know what kind of a business it was.

“You’re never telling me you don’t know Pringle’s?”

But Phemie’s astonishment was forced, for she was on the defensive: “It’s mamma’s shop, and two of our girls help in it.”

There was no doubt in either of them that it was a disclosure; and as they looked steadily into each other’s eyes, Joanna was casting about for the way to put things right between them. She felt herself somehow to blame for the troublesome shop. She knew it well, as everybody in Glasgow did: Pringle’s the Ladies’ and Children’s Outfitter. But never before had she had a friend with a shop in the family. She could see Mildred Lovatt’s smile.

“Of course I know it,” she said, after a scarcely perceptible pause. “I’m wearing a chemise now that I got there. It’s the best I ever had!”

“That’s the worst of mamma’s things,” rejoined Phemie. “They wear everlastingly. I have one on too – for a wonder!”

They both laughed a little tremulously now that their anxiety was gone. It was all right. Things were going to be all right between them.

V

Thus it was, that Joanna came for the first time upon the reservoir of human life which gives to Glasgow its essential character. And she came upon it in its purity at Sans Souci, the villa on the South Side of the river, where the Pringle family vociferously lived.

It is curious how completely a household like the Bannermans’ may lead an alien existence in a town. Juley, only coming to live in Glasgow on her marriage, had long kept the feelings of an exile; and something of this had been communicated to her children. On Sholto’s side, the family associations had been with the citizens of the passing generation, and his public ties had died with him. Even in his lifetime Edinburgh had come to be regarded as the true Bannerman headquarters.