'Rid o' her—the dirty besom!' said Lizzie, reverting to the idiom of the fray. 'I put her to the door, and to the street—and her skirling like a scraggit hen! I'se warrant ye, I got rid o' her!'
'Well, I hope you gave her her wages up to date,' said Herries, turning away, 'and did not put the poor wretch penniless on the pavement, in her condition, and in this weather.'
'Oo, she had siller, I'm thinking,' said the old woman, with a sly look; 'there was a croon i' the pocket o' her—and ane no' honestly come by, neither.'
'Bless me!' said Herries, 'you paint your relative very black, Lizzie! Did she steal the crown?'
'Na,' said Lizzie, with unpleasant meaning in her tone; she had a tongue that would always hurt someone, if it could,—'she got given the croon right enough! 'Twas frae that braw leddy i' the red coat ye had to her tea here; she wad hae Mysie haud her tongue aboot some cantrip o' her ane, up the toon there, leaving a letter, or sic-like trash; but Mysie, ye ken, was simple, and aye blabbed everything she saw. O, they're a' the same, gentle and simple,' added Lizzie, who hated her own sex with inexplicable malice.
'You may go,' said Herries, curtly. He felt as though he had got a slap across the face—and from a dirty hand.
Pressure of work at first allowed him no time for unprofitable musing. He had to go down to his partner's room on business. The office, as usual, was heated to suffocation, and he found Creighton—a most singular state of things—half asleep, or rather in a condition of a sort of semi-torpor, crouching over the fire. He, however, roused himself, and attended to the business in hand with almost his usual perspicacity. But Herries perceived that his energy was but a spurt; it flagged almost instantly.
'You don't look well, sir,' he said to the elder man.
'I am not well, Herries,' Creighton answered heavily, but he said no more, for his breath seemed to catch.
'I must beg of you to excuse my further attendance to-day,' he gasped out. 'I must—I must go out into the air. I burn—my chest seems weighted. The fresh air would relieve me.'