She struck some chords, gently giving the worn instrument its chance, her listening face turning the while sideways towards the window. It was a beautiful movement of her long neck and sloping shoulders, a quite unconscious disengaging of herself from the others, so that she became aloof in her circle of yellow light – she and the huge, old black piano.

Then her breast rose, her throat swelled like a bird’s and there came quite softly like a fine-drawn thread of gold, the first high, sweet note of her song.

Nilsson lay back sighing in his chair, his eyes closed, and a look of utter contentment on his face. But Joanna leaned forward, her elbows on her knees, her eyes on the singer, thirsty for each lovely, careful note.

This girl, whom half an hour earlier she had summed up as common and silly, was an artist, no less! What a mistake she had made! Now she was eager to accept her humiliation. And above all, if only it might be, she longed to make Euphemia Pringle her friend.

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.