She was seated on the horsehair sofa in the fire-twilight, waiting for customers, when the face of Galbraith came peering round the door-cheek.
“Come awa ben,” she said, hospitably, and rose. But as she did so, she added with a little change of tone, “But I’m thinkin’ ye maun hae forgotten, Sir George. This is Setterday nicht, ye ken; an’ gien it war to be Sunday mornin’ afore ye wan to yer bed, it wadna be the first time, an’ ye michtna be up ear’ eneuch to get yersel shaved afore kirk time.”
She knew as well as George himself that never by any chance did he go to church; but it was her custom, as I fancy it is that of some other bulwarks of society and pillars of the church, “for the sake of example,” I presume, to make not unfrequent allusion to certain observances, moral, religious, or sanatory as if they were laws that everybody kept.
Galbraith lifted his hand, black, and embossed with cobbler’s wax, and rubbed it thoughtfully over his chin: he accepted the fiction offered him; it was but the well-known prologue to a hebdomadal passage between them. What if he did not intend going to church the next day? Was that any reason why he should not look a little tidier when his hard week’s-work was over, and his nightly habit was turned into the comparatively harmless indulgence of a Saturday, in sure hope of the day of rest behind.
“Troth, I didna min’ ’at it was Setterday,” he answered. “I wuss I had pitten on a clean sark, an’ washen my face. But I s’ jist gang ower to the barber’s an’ get a scrape, an’ maybe some o’ them ’ill be here or I come back.”
Mistress Croale knew perfectly that there was no clean shirt in George’s garret. She knew also that the shirt he then wore, which probably, in consideration of her maid’s festered hand, she would wash for him herself, was one of her late husband’s which she had given him. But George’s speech was one of those forms of sound words held fast by all who frequented Mistress Croale’s parlour, and by herself estimated at more than their worth.
The woman had a genuine regard for Galbraith. Neither the character nor fate of one of the rest gave her a moment’s trouble; but in her secret mind she deplored that George should drink so inordinately, and so utterly neglect his child as to let him spend his life in the streets. She comforted herself, however, with the reflection, that seeing he would drink, he drank with no bad companions—drank at all events where what natural wickedness might be in them, was suppressed by the sternness of her rule. Were he to leave her fold—for a fold in very truth, and not a sty, it appeared to her—and wander away to Jock Thamson’s or Jeemie Deuk’s, he would be drawn into loud and indecorous talk, probably into quarrel and uproar.
In a few minutes George returned, an odd contrast visible between the upper and lower halves of his face. Hearing his approach she met him at the door.
“Noo, Sir George,” she said, “jist gang up to my room an’ hae a wash, an’ pit on the sark ye’ll see lyin’ upo’ the bed; syne come doon an’ hae yer tum’ler comfortable.”
George’s whole soul was bent upon his drink, but he obeyed as if she had been twice his mother. By the time he had finished his toilet, the usual company was assembled, and he appeared amongst them in all the respectability of a clean shirt and what purity besides the general adhesiveness of his trade-material would yield to a single ablution long delayed. They welcomed him all, with nod, or grin, or merry word, in individual fashion, as each sat measuring out his whisky, or pounding at the slow-dissolving sugar, or tasting the mixture with critical soul seated between tongue and palate.