One night I was working here late—green tea, towel round my head—oral next morning. There was a knock at the door. The landlady was in bed, so I went. There was a laddie there, bare-legged and with a voice like a rip-saw.
"If ye please, there's a man wants awfu' to see ye at Grant's Land at the back o' the Pleasance."
I took my stick and went out into the night. It was just coming light, and the gas-jets began to look foolish. I stumbled up to the door, and the boy showed me in. It was a poor place—of the poorest. The stair was simply filthy.
But the room into which I was shown was clean, and there on a bed, with the gas and the dawn from the east making a queer light on his face, sat Fenwick Major.
He held out his hand.
"How are you, Chirnside? Kind of you to come. This is the little wife!" was what he said, but I can tell you he looked a lot more.
At the word a girl in black stole silently out of the shadow, in which I had not noticed her.
She had a white, drawn face, and she watched Fenwick Major as a mother watches a sick child that is going to be taken from her up at the hospital.
"I wanted to see you, old chap, before I went—you know. It's a long way to go, and there's no use in hanging back even if I could. But the little wife says she knows the road, and that I won't find it dark. She can't read much, the little wife—education neglected and all that. Precious lot I made of mine, medals and all! But she's a trump. She made a man of me. Worked for me, nursed me. Yes, you did, Sis, and I shall say it. It won't hurt me to say it. Nothing will hurt me now, Sis."
"James, do not excite yourself!" said the little wife just then.