'He's aye doon i' the mooth when he comes here, Liz,' said the mother, with a passing touch of spirit. 'We're ower puir folk for my lord noo that he's gettin' among the gentry.'
'The gentry of Argyle Street an' the Sautmarket, mother?' asked Walter dryly. 'They'll no' do much for ye.'
'Is Skinny no' gaun to raise yer screw, Wat?' asked Liz. 'It's high time he was thinkin' on't.'
'I'll ask him one o' these days, but he might as well keep the money as me. This is a bottomless pit,' he said, with bitterness. 'It could swallow a pound as quick as five shillings, an' never be kent.'
'Ye're richt, Wat; but I wad advise ye to stick in to Skinny. He has siller, they say, an' maybe ye'll finger it some day.'
One night not long after, Liz presented herself at the house in Colquhoun Street, to return the visit of Gladys. As it happened, Walter was not in, having heard of a night school where the fees were so small as to be within the range of his means. Gladys looked genuinely pleased to see her visitor, though she hardly recognised in the fashionably-dressed young lady the melancholy-looking girl she had seen lying on the kitchen bed in the house of the Hepburns.
'Daur I come in? Would he no' be mad?' asked Liz, when they shook hands at the outer door.
'Do you mean my uncle?' asked Gladys. 'He will be quite pleased to see you. Come in; it is so cold here.'
'For you, ay; but I'm as warm's a pie, see, wi' my new fur cape—four an' elevenpence three-farthings at the Polytechnic. Isn't it a beauty, an' dirt cheap?'
Thus talking glibly about what was more interesting to her than anything else in the world, Liz followed Gladys into the kitchen, where the old man sat, as usual, in his arm-chair by the fireside, looking very old and wizened and frail in the flickering glow of fire and candle light.