Yaverland, who had not come much in contact with Scotch sentimentality, felt very sick, and increasingly so as the old man told how he had met her up at the Sheriff’s Court.  “Sixteen, and making her appearance in the Sheriff’s Court!” Yaverland had a vision of a court of obscure old men all gloating impotently and imaginatively on Ellen’s red and white.  “What was she doing there?” he asked in exasperation, forgetting his vow to appear indifferent about Ellen, and was enraged to see Mr. Mactavish James chuckle at the perceived implications of his interested enquiry.  “Well, it was this way.  Her mither, who was Ellen Forbes, whom I knew well when I was young, had the wee house in Hume Park Square.  You’ll have been there?  Hev’ ye not?  Imphm.  I thought so.  Well, they’d had thought difficulty in paying the rent....”  The story droned on perpetually, breaking off into croonings of sensual pity; and Yaverland sat listening to it with such rage, that, as he soon knew from the narrator’s waggish look, the vein in his forehead began to swell.

It appeared that the poor little draggled bird had in the summer of its days been known as Ellen Forbes had got into arrears with the rent; as some cheque had been greatly delayed, and that when the cheque had arrived she had been taken away to the fever hospital with typhoid fever, and that, since she had to lie on her back for three weeks, Ellen, who was left alone in that wee house—­he rolled his tongue round the loneliness repellently—­had neither sent the cheque on to her nor asked her to write a cheque for the rent.  The landlord, “a man called Inglis, wi’ offices up in Clark Street, who does a deal of that class of property”—­it was evident that he admired such—­saw a prospect of getting tenants to take on the house at a higher rental.  So, “knowing well that Ellen was a wean and no’ kenning what manner of wean she was,” and hearing from some source that they were exceptionally friendless and alone, served her with a notice that he was about to apply for an eviction order.  But Ellen had attended the court and told her story.

“By the greatest luck in the world I happened to be in court that day, looking after the interests of a client of mine, a most respectable unmarried lady, a pillar of St. Giles, who had been horrified to find out that her property was being used as a bad house.  Hee hee.”  He was abashed to perceive that this young man was not overcome with mirth and geniality at the mention of a brothel.  “The minute I saw the wee thing standing there in the well of the court, saying what was what—­she called him ‘the man Inglis,’ she did!—­I kenned there was not her like under the sun.”  She had won her case; but Mr. James had intercepted her on the way out, and had stopped her to congratulate her, and had been amazed to find the tears running down her cheeks.  “I took the wee thing aside.”  It turned out that to defend her home, and keep it ready for her mother coming out