So that wondrous day ended for Alison, and she was alone at last, with no tangible memento of it, saving, indeed, a large cold potato in her muff. A certain intangible memento, it is true, burned upon her cheek, so that she was glad to bury it in the cool sheets. One never knows how long it may be since a reader was in love, and so it were better, perhaps, not to tell how a silly girl, that night, went to bed with a cold potato under her pillow. It might be so very long ago—that silly season with the reader—that he may well have forgotten that, though the sense of humour is a mighty great thing, there is a time with us all when it is nought.
CHAPTER XXVII.
Ordinary mortals, from the schoolboy upward, are familiar with the disagreeableness of what may be called the Monday mornings of life—those after-holiday mornings which come as a cold douche after a pleasant outing. Herries tasted the full amenities of this experience on first buckling to his work after the excursion to Prestonpans. On Sunday—a dies non in the Edinburgh of those days, when most decent persons went to church and stayed there—nothing could be done. On Monday morning he descended to his office in his grimmest business mood, very unlike a young man who had kissed a girl under the lantern in the General's Entry, late on Saturday evening. Indeed, anyone less like kissing, or being kissed, never was seen.
He found a disagreeable accumulation of business; and a certain fact that had lately, from time to time, been hinting its existence—the fact, namely, that his partner's working capacities were on the wane—was this morning, for the first time, fully borne in upon his mind. In regard to the rather important affairs of a client, there was confusion, and, in respect to the preparation of certain deeds and papers, delay; neither, a few weeks ago, would have been possible, under Creighton's inexorable régime. Herries felt that probably he must shortly face—of all things the most worrying to a business-man, whose affairs have long run in a smooth, appointed groove—a change of partnership. It was the more difficult as Creighton gave no hint of his retirement, and the idea that such a hint might have to originate with his partner, was exceedingly repugnant to the younger man. Herries was aware that his associate's health was very delicate, but like all those in daily contact with a failing man, he had no idea how great and how rapid was the decline. It certainly never struck him that Creighton omitted to speak of his retirement from business, simply because he believed the last retirement of all to be imminent, and death about to set his partner free.
When Herries had made some headway with his morning's work, lost his temper with his clerk, and otherwise expressed his consciousness of the untowardness of things in general, he made the pleasing discovery, that a moral earthquake was heaving in the domestic department of his house. His room was ill-swept, his fire ill-tended; he summoned Lizzie, who appeared in even more than her usual condition of dishevelment, and telling her to send Mysie with some wood, was met with the baffling information: 'There's nae Mysie here!' delivered with a war-like snort.
'No Mysie!' exclaimed Herries. 'Why, what's come to the girl?'
'There's that come to her,' said Lizzie, succinctly, 'that it ill becomes a decent body to hae the tellin' o'....'
'What!' said Herries, repressing a strong inclination to laugh. 'Has the poor wench gone wrong?'
The ferocity of Lizzie's expression was answer enough.
'So homely looks are no safeguard after all, Lizzie?' said Herries, when he had been enlightened. 'And all your trouble in choosing a discreet helpmate was thrown away!' He could not help tormenting his dependent, whose temper afforded him amusement at times, as well as inconvenience. 'How and when did you get rid of the girl?' he enquired.