“Put on your kep and come awa’ doon the toon wi’ me,” she said to Erchie. “I hate gaun into some o’ thae big shops mysel’.”
“Then whit wye dae ye no’ jist gang into the wee yins ye ken?” he asked her. “If ye’re feared they’ll eat ye in the big yins I wadna gang to them.”
“Oh, that’s a’ very weel, but the wee yins havena the turnover,” she explained. “Ye get things far fresher at this time o’ the year doon the toon.”
“I’ll gang wi’ ye, for I ken that if I didna gang they wad tak’ a fair lend o’ ye,” Erchie agreed at last; “but mind, I’m no’ gaun to stand lookin’ in at baby-linen shop-windows or onything o’ that sort. Me bein’ a public man in a kind o’ wye, it disna dae.”
“I’ll no’ ask ye to dae onything o’ the kind, ye pridefu’ auld thing ye,” she promised, and off, they set.
She wanted a pair of gloves for a favourite grand-daughter, an umbrella for a sister of Erchie’s, who was a widow and poor, and something as a wedding-present for Duffy’s fiancee.
There was scarcely a drapery warehouse in Argyle Street whose window did not attract her. Erchie never looked into any of them, but patiently stood apart on the edge of the pavement or walked slowly ahead.
“Come here and see this at seevenpence three-fardens,” she entreated him.
“It’s fine, a rale bargain; I wad tak’ that,” he replied, looking towards the window from afar off, and quite ignorant of what she alluded to, but determined not to be caught by any one who knew him as waiter or beadle, looking into a shop-window full of the most delicate feminine mysteries of attire.
She went into the warehouse, while he walked on to the next shop—a cutler’s—and looked intently in at the window of it, as if he were contemplating the purchase of a costly pocket-knife with five blades, a corkscrew, and an appliance popularly supposed to be for taking stones out of a horse’s hoof. When he was joined by Jinnet, she had plainly begun to lose her nerve.