I could only look at him in amazement.
“Why, Irma is very well,” I said; “she never looked better in her life.”
“My boy,” said the Advocate, laying his hand gently on my arm, “I have loved a wife, and I have lost a wife who loved me; I do not wish to stand by and let you do the same for the want of a friend’s word. Write to-night!”
And he turned on his heel and marched off. At twenty steps’ distance he turned. “Duncan,” he said, “we will need all your time at the Review; you had better give up the Secretary’s office. I have spoken to Morrison about it. I shall be so much in London for a year or two that you will be practically in charge. We will get a smart young colleger to take your place.”
That night I wrote to my Aunt Janet. It was after Irma, fatigued more easily than was usual with her, had gone to bed. Four days afterwards, I was looking over some manuscript sheets which that day had to go to the printer. Mistress Pathrick, who had just arrived to prepare the breakfast (I had lit the kitchen fire when I got up), burst in upon me with the announcement that there was “sic a gathering o’ folk” at the door, and a “great muckle owld woman coming in!”
I hastened down, and there in the little lobby stood—my grandmother. She was arrayed in her oldest black bombazine. A travel-crushed beaver bonnet was clapped tightly on her head. The black velvet band about her white hair had slipped down and now crossed her brow transversely a little above one bushy eyebrow, giving an inconceivably rakish appearance to her face. She held a small urchin, evidently from the Grassmarket or the Cowgate, firmly by the cuff of his ragged jacket. She was threatening him with her great blue umbrella.
“If ye hae led me astray, ye skirmishing blastie, I’ll let ye ken the weight o’ this!”
The youth was guarding himself with one hand and declaring alternately that, “This is the hoose, mem,” and, “I want my saxpence!”
A little behind two sturdy porters, laden with a box apiece, blocked up the doorway, and loomed large across the garden.
“Eh, Duncan, but this is an awesome place,” cried my grandmother. “So many folk, and it’s pay this, and so much for that! It’s a fair disgrace. There’s no man in Eden Valley that wadna hae been pleased to gie me a lift from the coach wi’ my bit boxes. But here, certes, it’s sae muckle for liftin’ them up and sae muckle more for settin’ them doon, and to crown a’ a saxpence to a laddie for showin’ me the road to your house! It’s a terrible difference to Heathknowes, laddie. Now, I wadna wonder if ye hae to pay for your very firewood!”