Part 6

'You see, they love their little mother, Ally,' she said, and her eyes were full of tears. Alison cast a motherly eye upon the children. It was very late, she thought, in her matter-of-fact way, for little boys to be out of their beds, especially the younger, who looked so small and 'shilpit.' Then she reflected she would ask Nancy, as soon as possible, to be allowed to let out their clothes--more especially Willy's--for the discrepancies of the little green suits were at once apparent to her practical eye. Nancy, in the meantime, was frolicking about the little room, putting things into place, giving a pat here, a push there--a little tug to a curtain, or change of position to a screen or chair. Presently, she fell upon a packet of letters that had awaited her arrival, and was instantly absorbed in them, her quick, little, ringed fingers busy with their fastenings. All at once she gave a little cry of rapture and surprise.

'Ally,' she called, 'oh, Ally! what do you think? The gods are kind at last--Fortune smiles! Did I not tell you I'd get my heart's desire? Here is a letter from my cousin Nimmo--Miss Nimmo--and she asks me to a tea-drinking at her house to-morrow; 'tis actually to meet--to meet and be made known to, the Poet--my poet--the world's poet--the immortal bard--ah! magic name--to Robert Burns!' Alison smiled down at her friend with her kind, gentle grey eyes.

'I'm so glad, Nancy,' she said; ''twill be a great event--and how lucky you are home in time!'

'La, yes, child, indeed!' said Nancy. 'Supposing I had missed it, I'd have gone mad, I think, with sheer vexation! Ally, you've brought me happiness, you've brought luck to my house!' She flung an arm about Alison's waist; she was almost dancing with glee. Her great dark eyes shone and glowed, her vivid lips were parted, to let her hurried breathing come and go. Beside the quiet, calm, unstirred country girl--a something tropical, she seemed, turning to passion, as the flower turns to the light it cannot live without.

'But now, to bed!' she cried. 'To bed, boys, Alison, all. To-morrow must come quick, quick--on wings, Ally, on wings!'

So the little rooms were darkened, and Alison, feeling rather big and strange amid her new surroundings, took possession of Jean's closet, feeling more at home when she found that Danny slept beside her, in a little cot like Jacky's.

*CHAPTER XIII.*

A north wind, whistling at the windows, awoke Alison next morning from rather troubled dreams of The Mains, and her mother, and Mr. Cheape. But it is difficult not to be cheerful at twenty, and Alison, who was a sensible and wholesome young woman, had soon put away night-thoughts, and was prepared to enter heartily into all the brisk novelty of her surroundings. Nancy's home, if a garret, was a very lively garret, with the boys at their play, Jean's cheerful industries, and its own gay, fascinating little mistress, tripping here and there, with laughter ever on her lips and in her eyes.

'Why, Ally,' she cried, 'the sun shines on you, child! 'Tis the first fine morning for a month. You must get a walk and see the town.' She was busy with a dress, as she spoke, a gay thing of rose pink, just sobered down with black, that she had taken out of a press.

'For, you see, love,' she said, 'I must be modish to-night, if ever so in my life. Had there been time, I'd have had a new gown to deck poor Nancy's fading charms, and fit them for a poet's eye.'

'You'd look pretty in anything,' said Alison, meaning every word. Nancy laughed, with the liquid sparkle of her wonderful almond eyes.

'But, child, you shall not sit in here all day, watching me trim my silly self for Nimmo's tea-drinking,' she said. 'I will tell you what we'll do. Willy and Danny shall take you between them: I have not, indeed, the time myself this morning, or I'd come with my Ally as the first of pleasures; but you shall walk over to the New Town, and to my cousin Herries's, and get me the packet of monies that is due. 'Tis mighty awkward in him not to have it waiting me here. I've to borrow from Jean already; but it makes a nice outing on a sunny morning. Will you go, child?'

'Surely,' said Alison. And she went away to prepare herself, for her first walk in the streets, in the little closet she could hardly turn in. She tied on, as she was wont to do at home on Sundays, her wide hat of rather sun-burnt straw, over the 'mob' that was supposed to keep her hair in order. So that her sweet, grave face had a double framing of clean frills and soft unruly curls. A cross-over tippet covered her handsome shoulders. It was almost a summer suit, but Alison had nothing else.

'Lud, what a country figure the poor child cuts,' was Nancy's inward comment as Alison stood before her. 'I must see to her clothes presently, presently.' She came to the stair-head to see the little party set off, bidding the boys take great care of their friend.

A gay north wind blew high that day through the grim streets of Edinburgh town. It was a morning of bright, shallow, winter sunshine. When they had gone down into the Cowgate, and up again on the other side, Alison and her little guides found themselves on the ridge of the city, and below them they could see the nascent New Town spreading itself, and beyond that, a lovely distance, rounded by the blue hills of Fife, and watered by the widening Forth. It was a day and scene to lift the spirits to their zenith. The keen wind searched the thin folds of Alison's summer gown, and blew the curls about her face, which grew rosy with the cold. Her blood ran warm, and she laughed, with the little boys, just for pure health and happiness and freedom.

However, when they reached George Street, Alison became subdued. Was she not, probably, about to meet the terrible Mr. Herries, that most exacting and particular gentleman, of whom even Nancy stood in awe? The severe aspect of the housekeeper, who sourly asked her business at the door, entirely failed to reassure her; and what with the flutter in her manner, the low tones of her voice in which she asked to see 'the gentleman in the office,' it was not surprising, perhaps, that a mistake arose. So that she was shown into Mr. Creighton's room, instead of Herries's, the little boys tugging dumbly, but unavailingly, at her skirts the while.

Mr. Creighton rose in all the confusion and dismay of spirit which the entry of a female into his sanctum was wont to cause within him. In his gaunt, elderly figure Alison perceived the very image of Archibald Herries, which Nancy's casual references to her cousin had managed to call up in her imagination.

'Will you be good enough to excuse this interruption, sir?' she timidly began, seeing that Creighton made no effort to open the interview. 'I am come from my kind friend, Mrs. Maclehose, on a message, to receive a packet at your hands which she expects.'

Creighton was looking at her with the unsparing penetration--it had a kind of gimlet-like quality--of his habitual regard. Alison's unconscious grey eyes met his without flinching; it was indeed he who first looked away. 'Who was the woman?' he wondered. Somehow, with her full, large presence, her fresh face and country attire, there seemed to have come a breath of the fields and hills into his fusty room.

'Mrs. Maclehose is not accustomed to confide her messages with me, madam,' he said. 'It is likely she meant you to apply to Mr. Herries.'

'Why, sir,' said Alison, confused and blushing, 'are you--are you not--' The lawyer emitted a dry chuckle.

'I am not Mr. Herries,' he said, smiling. 'In the matter of years I have some advantage, doubtless, over that gentleman, but he is my superior, ma'am. I am only Andrew Creighton--at your service, of course. May I ask, now,' he went on, drily, 'how you are led to think of Mr. Herries as old enough to be his cousin's father?' ('It was like the little Jezebel,' he was saying to himself, and he meant poor Nancy, 'to make her cousin out an old man, and spoil his chances with a likely lass!')

But Alison protested she knew nothing of Herries's age, stammering, as all truthful people will, over a white fib.

'You thought all legal gentlemen were old, perhaps?' said Creighton, quite genially, 'but I protest not; some of us are young and handsome, I assure you!' He invited his guests to a seat, which they were too timid to refuse, and had soon evoked from Alison her name and county.

'Graham--Graham of The Mains, to be sure,' he said. 'Why, I remember your father well. He used to be in and about the town in his youth, but he never comes now, I take it.'

''Tis a long way off, and my father is busy, and there are too many of _us_,' Alison explained, and the lawyer seemed fully to understand this pregnant statement.

'Family cares,' he gravely remarked, 'soon make a solid man out of a young spark. But you,' he went on, 'you are come on a visit of pleasure, I understand, and must do our old city the fullest justice. You must see the sights, madam--Holyrood, the Castle, the Crags. But, doubtless,' with a clumsy effort to be gallant, 'there are plenty ready and willing to do the honours of Auld Reekie to Miss Graham of The Mains.'

'No, indeed, sir,' said Alison, quite simply; 'there is no one but Mrs. Maclehose, but she is the kindest of the kind, and will show me everything that I ought to see.'

'Oh, ay, indeed!' said the lawyer in a different voice. After that Alison rose to go.

'I will bid you good-day now, sir,' she said, with the modest air that had so taken the crusty old lawyer, 'and I will trust to your kindness to let Mr. Herries know that his cousin sent a message for the monies.' ('Trust her for that!' interpolated Nancy's instinctive foe.)

He saw his guests to the door with, for him, a singular show of courtesy. When he came back into his room he stood at the window, peering over the blind, holding a rough chin between finger and thumb in an attitude of deep contemplation. 'Graham of The Mains,' he muttered; 'a good name, and a fine lass! She looked true. They cannot _all_ be deceivers and liars, surely. Will _he_ give any heed to her, though? There will be opportunity, chances enough. But no, no; I need never think it.' And rather impatiently he turned to his interrupted work, and was soon buried in its details.

*CHAPTER XIV.*

When Herries, who had been absent on business, returned to his house, he was annoyed to find that he had missed the emissary from his cousin. 'That means, I suppose, that I must e'en trail out over there myself after office hours,' he said to himself. 'Plague take the woman! And yet she must be visited at some time or another.' Visits, rather of business than of pleasure to his troublesome charge in the Potterrow, were a part of the routine of his life. They would generally be spent in a wrangle over accounts, and yet hardly a wrangle either, for it takes two to make such a thing, and Nancy was incapable of quarrelling. But Herries would spend a laborious hour trying to instil into his volatile charge some notion of the nature of money, and the value of keeping and giving an account thereof. He might as well have tried to instil into the passing winds an appreciation of these practical details. Nancy had but one notion of money--to spend it. Not that even Herries, in his severest moments, could call her selfishly or systematically extravagant, which was the more provoking. It was an infinitesimal house-keeping--that of the tiny household in the Potterrow; but by systematic ideas of cutting her coat according to her cloth in all things, Nancy would not, or could not, be governed, and Herries would drive himself nearly crazy over the futility of his efforts to coerce this delicate, frail, light, feminine thing that so smilingly defied him.

This night, as he prepared himself to walk over to the Potterrow, another annoyance from a feminine source assailed him. Lizzie, his housekeeper, demanded an untimely interview by knocking at his door and then entering his room, followed, at a discreet distance, by, apparently, a satellite.

'Well, woman, what is it?' he demanded crossly.

'Weel ye s'ud ken what it is,' said Ailie, who used all the freedom of speech towards her master of an old servant of his family, which, indeed, she was. 'Was I no' tellin' ye yestreen it was the day I was to gar ma sister's husband's niece--it's the lass Mysie--come oot ower frae the Wabster's Close, to see if she wadna do ye for a help tae me aboot the hoose, noo a'm that auld and failed'--

'Oh, the devil take her!' said Herries, impatiently. 'Of course she'll do if she suits you. It's your business, isn't it?'

'Na! it's just no my business!' retorted the old woman, sourly. 'For when I said I wad like weel to hae a lass, ye hummed and haw'd, and--"the dangers o' the toon!" quo' you--to a young lassie wi' the beaux and sic like. 'Od, I'se gar ye see I'se gotten ane that wull hae nae sic havers. Come ben, Mysie!' She called to her relative, who had remained, meanwhile, on the landing without, and who now obediently appeared. 'Tak the screen aff ye!' commanded Lizzie, alluding to the tartan shawl commonly worn about the head and face by the poorer women of that day.

Mysie divested herself of this garment, and disclosed to view a countenance certainly destitute of any conspicuous allurement to the aforesaid beaux. She was a very tall and somewhat grenadier-like young woman, with a pale, rather haggard, face, a quick, roving glance, and a general air as of something newly caught and altogether untamed.

'She has the three nieces wi' her gude man, ma sister,' continued Lizzie,' and I'se warrant ye weel I waled the little bonniest o' the bilin'! Mysie 'll no be bathered wi' the lads, I'm thinkin'.'

She contemplated her connection with grim approval, almost pride; but Mysie, who had hitherto listened to the curious encomium of her lack of dangerous charms with a perfectly apathetic indifference, uttered, at the last words, a sudden, odd laugh. Herries looked up sharply, but the naturally rather heavy face had become stolidly grave again, and Mysie, ordered to do so by her relative, proceeded meekly to leave the room.

'I've seen her before, somewhere, surely?' said Herries, thoughtfully, teased by some vague reminiscence. 'Rather a rough diamond, isn't she, Lizzie?'

''Oo--a wee thing, mebbe--ay!' said Lizzie, cheerfully. 'She's fresh aff the fields, doon Colinton way, howkin' tatties ... but she's takken wi' a notion for genteel sairvice i' the toon. 'Od, she'll get it wi' me, onyway!' Thus promising abundant, wholesome occupation for her hopeful _protegee_, Lizzie departed to nether regions, well pleased. Herries felt that he had not cottoned greatly to his new retainer. But the choice of a scullion seemed, for the time being, a matter of such infinitely small importance, that he had presently forgotten Mysie as completely as though she had never existed.

Presently, having dined, he walked briskly up the town in the gloaming. Lights were beginning to twinkle from the houses in the old town--lights so high up in the gathering haze, that they seemed to strain to the stars. The ill-lighted and malodorous wynds and closes clattered to the deafening din of their granite-given echoes; harsh voices called to each other across the narrow spaces; there floated from the castle height the toll of a bell, giving the hour. Herries picked his way to the Potterrow, and was admitted to his cousin's house by the discreet Jean.

With the privilege of intimacy, he walked unannounced into the little parlour. But for the dancing firelight it was in darkness, the cosy, red curtains drawn, and those within seemed in no hurry for the lights.

'Well, cousin!' said Herries, carelessly, as he entered. But so very tall a woman's figure rose from the hearth, where it seemed to have been seated--displacing two little boys as it did so--that Herries realised at once it was not his Cousin Nancy. Jean saved the situation at this critical moment by bringing in a pair of lighted candles. And thus Archibald Herries and Alison Graham saw each other for the first time.

Alison shook in her shoes, for she felt that this could be none other than the redoubtable Herries. And Herries, who was in a bad temper, inwardly cursed his luck which had betrayed him into an awkward interview with a country miss.

'Mrs. Maclehose is gone out to a tea-drinking, sir,' Alison managed to say, standing shyly where she had risen. 'But she should presently come home. It is past the hour when she promised to return.'

'I apologise for my intrusion,' said Herries. 'Let me present myself, in Mrs. Maclehose's absence--her cousin, and your servant, Archibald Herries.' He bowed, with the accustomed little flourish and affectation of the day, and Alison stole a look at him half frightened and half fascinated. She had never seen so fine a personage as this young man in all her days, with his smartly cut, if sober, coat--his laced frills, the powder in his hair, the ring upon his finger. How fine and delicate and clear-cut were his features, how cold and keen his blue eyes, under those ironically-arched and finely pencilled eyebrows. No wonder, Alison thought, that Nancy was afraid of him. He was terrible: much more so, being so smart and fine, than if he had been a snuffy old gentleman, such as Alison, in her fancy, had painted him. And yet, behold, the moment he sat down, Danny inserted himself between his knees, and Willy lolled against his shoulder, with the clumsy affection of boyhood. The children, evidently, were not afraid of this terrible person. Alison, in an agony of shyness, was wondering if she must introduce herself, when Herries saved her the trouble.

'And so you are come to explore the capital, Miss Graham,' he said, showing that he knew her name, 'but doubtless you knew it before?'

'No, indeed, sir,' said Alison. 'I never was in a town in my life, excepting Stirling, where I was at school.'

'Ah, indeed!' said Herries, suppressing a yawn, but not at all suppressing a bad-tempered tendency to be covertly rude to this country girl, who was going to bore him. 'And when you were not at school, in Stirling, you lived--?'

'I lived at my father's house, sir,' said Alison, quite simply.

'Hum-m,' said Herries, perhaps a trifle disconcerted. 'I believe that I have often heard of The Mains,' he went on, condescendingly, 'a rural solitude. And what did Miss Graham do at The Mains?'

'I minded the turkeys, sir,' said Alison, 'and did as I was bid.' She was not, in spite of her shyness and timidity, very well pleased with the condescending tone of this fine young townsman, and spoke roundly. The answer was amusing to Herries, and changed his mood. He looked attentively at the speaker, but would not admit there was anything to admire. A 'big bouncing miss,' he called her in his thoughts. But, nevertheless, he looked again; and once, he caught, full in the eyes, the innocent candour of her wide grey glance--and before it, he was aware that his own gaze fell.

'And have you made friends with these little men?' he asked, in a totally changed tone; and Willy and Danny grinned. After that they conversed very amicably about the little boys, their lessons and their play, Danny's delicacy and Willy's school. Herries made himself vastly agreeable, as he well could do when he chose; and Alison was quite startled when she saw how low the candles had burnt, which were quite respectably long when Jean had brought them in. But still Nancy tarried.

'My cousin is late, surely,' said Herries. 'I, too, was bidden to the great Nimmo's, but I suspect I have passed a much more profitable evening where I am.'

'But, indeed, no, sir!' said Alison, in all good faith. 'For the great Mr. Burns, the poet, was to be at Miss Nimmo's, and 'twas to meet him that Nancy was so wild to go.'

'I'm the more glad I was absent, then,' said Herries. 'Mr. Burns is not a person to my taste.'

'Why, sir,' said Alison, wonderingly, 'don't you admire his great poems?'

'I never read them,' said Herries, 'and never wish to. And, moreover,' he continued, severely, 'I gather they are no fit reading for a lady, whatever they may be for men.'

'But why?' cried Alison, forgetting her shyness, in her surprise, 'sure, sir, there's the most beautiful things in them, all the best feelings you can think of, and so often religion and the highest thoughts....'

'Then all I can say is,' said Herries, shortly, 'that their author adds hypocrisy to vice, and becomes the more odious in consequence.'

Alison gave a little gasp. She, who pored over 'The Cottar's Saturday Night,' and poems to 'The Mountain Daisy' and 'A Field Mouse'; and Herries, who heard the town talk of 'Holy Willie's Prayer,' and the even less-edifying satires, were, indeed, little likely to agree on the subject of the genius of Burns. But even had Herries stopped to consider the difference of their points of view, his opinion of the poet would have remained unaltered. And so it was that Alison found herself, for the first time, fluttering against that stone wall of prejudice which raised itself so soon in Herries's nature. She had too much tact to pursue the subject, and presently there were sounds without which proved a timely interruption. It was the chairmen, putting down the returning guest at the foot of the stair.

'Ah, there's Nancy at last, sir,' cried Alison, 'so you'll see her before you go.'

*CHAPTER XV.*

All her life long, even when she was an old, old woman, did Alison remember the vision that Nancy made as she came, fresh from Miss Nimmo's memorable party, into the little parlour that night. She was in her pretty dress of pink and black, her little shoes had high pink heels, and a pink rose fastened the lace lappets in her hair. But it was her face that was illumined: her parted lips were scarlet, her eyes glowed, her cheeks were delicately flushed. She clasped her hands together as she ran into the room, crying to Alison: 'Oh, Ally, I have seen him! And, oh, much more than that: I've talked with him! 'Tis the crowning night of my life....' And then, all at once, perceiving Merries, her face fell, and she stopped short in her rhapsody. 'You here, cousin!' she said, in a changed voice. 'Well, 'tis an age since we met. And now I must postpone my raptures, I know, for you'll not approve their object.'

'No need to name him,' said Herries, blandly, 'Miss Graham has enlightened me. And so,' he added, very disagreeably, it must be confessed, 'that dog has come back from the dung-hill to the drawing-room.'

'Herries!' exclaimed Nancy, passionately, 'how ... how dare you speak so?'

'Tut, cousin! I've the freedom of my tongue, haven't I, even though I speak of your consecrated bard? But there, I'll not wound your sensibilities and those of Miss Graham any further to-night.' Herries laughed as he spoke. 'I'll take myself off, and leave you ladies to enjoy your raptures. A mere man has no chance when there's a poet on the _tapis_.'

'Nay, Archie,' said Nancy, more gently, throwing herself, with a little sigh, into a chair and leaning back in it. 'Stay a while. 'Tis no wish of mine to drive you away, God wot!'