She had taken a saving turn, she said, as if it had been the measles. It was all very well for the table-maid always to wear a black frock.
But though she saw less of Cleaver's boy (the original and only genuine article), it is possible, and indeed likely, that Janet of Inverness knew more of the romance of Susy and Sal than Cleaver's boy gave her credit for. Let those who try to run three or four love affairs abreast, like horses in a circus ring, take warning. Janet of Inverness had never heard of either Sal or Susy from the lips of Cleaver's boy. Nevertheless, there was not much of importance to her schemes which was not familiar to the wise little head set upon the plumply demure shoulders of Janet of Inverness.
ADVENTURE XXIII.
THE AMOROUS ADVENTURES OF A NIGHT-SHIFT MAN.
An interview which Cleaver's boy had to endure may throw some light upon this. By some strange law of contrary, the undisputed possession of James Annan's affections damped Sal's ardour. She became flighty and difficult in her moods. Cleaver's boy could not take her to enough places of resort, or at least, not to the right ones. So long as he slighted her and rubbed her face with snow as a regular method of courtship, she could not love him enough. But now, when she was formally engaged to him and the alliance had been acknowledged by Providence and Miss Cecilia Tennant, Sal suddenly found that she did not care so much about Cleaver's boy after all. This happened in the second week of the new situation in the department of Cleaning and Lighting.
Sal came home from the mill at six. James went on duty at eight. Consequently it was now usually about seven when James called. It was an unhappy and ill-chosen time, as anybody but a man would have known. For Sal appeared to be in some undress, and was indeed engaged in frizzling her front hair with a pair of hot knitting needles, occasionally burning her fingers and her forehead in the process.
"Hoo are ye the nicht, Sal?" said James, standing at the cheek of the door and crossing his legs comfortably. Someone (he forgot who) had told him he looked well that way.
"Naething the better for seein' you!" retorted Sal over her shoulder. She never took her eyes off the fragment of mirror which was secured to the wall by two long nails and the broken end of another knitting needle.
"Wy Sal, what's wrang wi' ye?" began Cleaver's boy, anxiously. For though in the affairs of men, as between boy and boy, his voice was most for open war, yet in the things of love he liked peace and sacrificed much to secure it.
Sal humped up the shoulder next him and turned sharply away from him with a gesture indicative of the greatest disdain—without, however, taking her eyes from the faint blue smoke which went up from the left side of her fringe, to which she had at that moment applied a fresh pair of red-hot knitting needles.