From one of these spells he was awakened by the stoppage of the cab; and, getting down, found himself in quite a country road, the last lamp of the suburb shining some way below, and the high walls of a garden rising before him in the dark. The Lodge (as the place was named) stood, indeed, very solitary. To the south it adjoined another house, but standing in so large a garden as to be well out of cry; on all other sides, open fields stretched upward to the woods of Corstorphine Hill, or backward to the dells of Ravelston, or downward towards the valley of the Leith. The effect of seclusion was aided by the great height of the garden walls, which were, indeed, conventual, and, as John had tested in former days, defied the climbing schoolboy. The lamp of the cab threw a gleam upon the door and the not brilliant handle of the bell.
“Shall I ring for ye?” said the cabman, who had descended from his perch, and was slapping his chest, for the night was bitter.
“I wish you would,” said John, putting his hand to his brow in one of his accesses of giddiness.
The man pulled at the handle, and the clanking of the bell replied from further in the garden; twice and thrice he did it, with sufficient intervals; in the great, frosty silence of the night the sounds fell sharp and small.
“Does he expect ye?” asked the driver, with that manner of familiar interest that well became his port-wine face; and when John had told him no, “Well, then,” said the cabman, “if ye’ll tak’ my advice of it, we’ll just gang back. And that’s disinterested, mind ye, for my stables are in the Glesgie road.”
“The servants must hear,” said John.
“Hout!” said the driver. “He keeps no servants here, man. They’re a’ in the town house; I drive him often; it’s just a kind of a hermitage this.”
“Give me the bell,” said John; and he plucked at it like a man desperate.
The clamour had not yet subsided before they heard steps upon the gravel, and a voice of singular nervous irritability cried to them through the door, “Who are you, and what do you want?”
“Alan,” said John, “it’s me—it’s Fatty—John, you know. I’m just come home, and I’ve come to stay with you.”