wrong over this right of way, and Menzies & Lawson knew it.  He looked dotingly across at Ellen, breathed “Well, well!”—­that greeting by which Scot links himself to Scot in a mutual consciousness of a prudent despondency about life.  Age permitted him, in spite of his type, to delight in her.  In his youth he had turned his back on romance, lest it should dictate conduct that led away from prosperity, or should alter him in some manner that would prevent him from attaining that ungymnastic dignity which makes the respected townsman.  He had meant from the first to end with a paunch.  But now wealth was inalienably his and Beauty could beckon him on no strange pilgrimages, his soul retraced its steps and contemplated this bright thing as an earth creature might creep to the mouth of its lair and blink at the sun.  And there was more than that to it.  He loved her.  He had never had enough to do with pitiful things (his wife Elizabeth had been a banker’s daughter), and this, child had come to him, that day in June, so white, so weak, so chilled to the bone, for all the summer heat, by her monstrous ill-usage....

He said, “Nelly, will your mother be feared if you stop and take a few notes for Mr. Philip till eight?  There is a chemist body coming through from the cordite works at Aberfay who can’t come in the day but Saturday mornings, and you ken Mr. Philip’s away to London for the week-end by the 8.30, so he’s seeing him the night.  Mr. Philip would be thankful if you’d stop.”

“I will so, Mr. James,” said Ellen.

“You’re sure your mother’ll not be feared?”

“What way would my mother be feared,” said Ellen, “and me seventeen past?”

“There’s many a lassie who’s found being seventeen no protection from a wicked world.”  He emitted some great Burns-night chuckles, and kicked the fire to a blaze.

She said sternly, “Take note, Mr. James, that I haven’t done a hand’s turn this hour or more, and that not for want of asking for work.  Dear knows I have my hand on Mr. Morrison’s door-knob half the day.”

Mr. James got up to go.  “You’re a fierce hussy, and mean to be a partner in the firm before you’ve done with us.”

“If I were a man I would be that.”

“Better than that for you, lassie, better than that.  Wait till a good man comes by.”

She snorted at the closing door, but felt that he had come near to defining what she wanted.  It was not a good man she needed, of course, but nice men, nice women.  She had often thought that of late.  Sometimes she would sit up in bed and stare through the darkness at an imaginary group of people whom she desired to be with—­well-found people who would disclose themselves to one another with vivacity and beautiful results; who in large lighted rooms would display a splendid social life that had been previously nurtured by separate tender intimacies at hearths that were more than grates and fenders, in private picture-galleries with wide spaces between