“Every day.”
“And yet there is no sneck-handle, whereby you can get in when you are maybe in a hurry for a cup of tea?”
No answer from poor Mrs Kidd, and the thought came that the coals in the corner were surely out of place, in a little tidy house; and just mark how that kind of natural logic works.
“I should just like to look in.”
“And what would be the use? Hae ye never seen a number o’ marrowless cups and saucers?”
And maybe something even more marrowless, thought I, as, taking out a penknife and inserting it in a small slit, something like that of a check lock, I opened the door, and there, lying in a hole—the veritable bunker—was my friend of the Happy Land, extended on a small mattress. On this exposure, the poor mother covered her face with her hands and sobbed hysterically.
“The last o’t,” she said, in a voice broken by sobs. “The lang train o’ griefs a’ frae whaur there should hae come comfort and help is wound up. I hide and conceal nae mair, and what signified my hiding when God saw through a’. Tak him, sir; and may ye mak o’ him a better man to his brither-man, than he has been a son to me.”
“Has he given you a watch?” said I, in the expectation of profiting by what I considered to be a breaking down.
“No,” she replied, “I have never had ony o’ his secrets, nor for a lang time has he been near me, except when he wanted meat. His wild ways are best kenned to himsel’, but I fear women and drink have been his ruin.”
“Rise, James,” said I, “and give me the watch you robbed the gentleman of last night in the Happy Land.”