Haughtily she moved round the counter and with scornful finger-tips took up the tiny wreckage of a great hope.  The gold was twisted and bruised, the little pearls were loose in their places.  All at once she felt a horrid pain in her throat. . . .

Miss Tod appeared, fresh from the joys of strong tea.

‘Oh, lassie, ha’e ye hurted yersel’?’

Christina choked, recovered herself and cried:  ’I’ve sold a blighter a sixpenny notebook for threepence, an’ I’ll never get over it as long as I live.  B—­but I hope that’ll no be long!’

Just then Heaven sent a customer.

* * * * *

And perhaps Heaven sent the telegram that Macgregor found on his return home, rather late in the afternoon.  The war has changed many things and people, but mothers most of all.  Mrs. Robinson made no mention of the ‘extra special’ dinner prepared so vainly in her son’s honour.  ‘Yer fayther missed ye,’ was her only reference to his absence from the meal.

The telegram was an order to return to duty.  The mother and sister saw his eyes change, his shoulders stiffen.

‘Maybe something’s gaun to happen at last,’ he said; and almost in the same breath, though in a different voice—­’Christina’s finished wi’ me.  It was ma ain fau’t.  Ye needna speak aboot it.  I—­I’m no heedin’—­greatly.’  He cleared his throat.  ‘I’ll awa’ up to the works an’ say guid-bye to father.  Jimsie can come, if he likes.  Ye needna tell him the noo—­what I tell’t ye.’

Jimsie, summoned from play, was proud to go with his big brother.  He was ill next day owing to a surfeit of good things consumed at high pressure, but not too ill to discuss what he would purchase with the half-crown that seemed to have stuck to his hot little paw.

Back from the works, Macgregor found tea awaiting him.  His mother and sister were not a little relieved by his cheerfulness, though they were to doubt its sincerity later.  But the boy had never made a greater effort for the sake of those who loved him than in that little piece of dissembling.

The parting was brief.  An embrace, a kiss, a word or two that meant little yet all—­and he was out of the home.

His laugh, slightly subdued, came up the well of the staircase—­’Maybe it’s anither false alarm!’

’They looked over the rail, mute but trying to smile, and saw the last of him—­a hurrying sturdy, boyish figure, kilt swinging and hand aloft in final farewell.

His route took him through the street of Miss Tod’s shop.  It was characteristic of Macgregor that he did not choose another and less direct course.  He neither hesitated nor looked aside as he marched past the shop.  The sense of injustice still upheld him.  ’She never gi’ed me a chance!’ . . .  And so back to Duty.

* * * * *

Not more than five minutes later Private William Thomson came along in hot haste and banged into the shop.