“Baubie,” said that lady, “I will send some one here about you.  Now, don’t let me hear of your singing in the streets or begging again.  You will get into trouble if you do.”

She was descending the stairs as she spoke, and she turned round when she had reached the entry:  “You know the police will take you, Baubie.”

“Yes, mem,” answered Baubie, duly impressed.

“Well, now, I am going home.  Stay:  are you hungry?”

Without waiting for her answer, Miss Mackenzie entered a tiny shop close by, purchased a mutton-pie and handed it to Baubie Wishart, who received it with wondering reverence.  Miss Mackenzie took her way home westward up the Grassmarket.  She turned round before leaving it by way of King’s Stables, and caught sight of Bauble’s frock by the entry of Kennedy’s Lodgings—­a tiny morsel of color against the shadow of the huge gray houses.  She thought of the big kitchen and its occupants, and the face and words of the poor girl, and promised herself that she would send the school-board officer to Kennedy’s Lodgings that very night.

Baubie waited till her friend was well out of sight:  then she hid her mutton-pie in the same place with the onions and the piece of bread, and started up the Grassmarket in her turn.  She stopped at the first shop she passed and bought a pennyworth of cheese.  Then she made her way to the Lothian road, and looked up and down it anxiously in search of the walking advertisement-man.  He was not there, so she directed her course toward Princes street, and after promenading it as far east as the Mound, she turned up into George street, and caught sight of her father walking along slowly by the curbstone.  It was not long before she overtook him.

“Od, lassie, I wis thinkin’ lang,” he began wearily as soon as he realized her apparition.  Baubie did not wait for him to finish:  with a peremptory nod she signified her will, and he turned round and followed her a little way down Hanover street.  Then Baubie selected a flight of steps leading to a basement store, and throwing him a look of command flitted down and seated herself at the bottom.  It was sheltered from the cold wind and not too much overlooked.  Wishart shifted the boards from about his shoulders, and, following her, laid them against the wall at the side of the basement-steps, and sat down heavily beside her.  He was a sickly-looking man, sandy-haired, with a depressed and shifty expression of face—­not vicious, but weak and vacillating.  Baubie seemed to have the upper hand altogether:  every gesture showed it.  She opened the paper that was wrapped about her fragment of rank yellow cheese, laid it down on the step between them, and then produced, in their order of precedence, the pie, the onions and the bread.

“Wha gied ye that?” asked Wishart, gazing at the mutton-pie.

“A leddy,” replied Baubie, concisely.

“An’ they?” pointing to the onions.