‘Oh!’ said Mrs. Mel.

’They wanted—­one or two of them—­what a penance it is to have to sit among those people an hour!—­they wanted to ask me about the business, but I silenced them.  I told them to meet me here this day week.’

Mrs. Mel again said ‘Oh!’ and, pushing into one of the upper rooms, ‘Here’s your bedroom, Van, just as you left it.’

‘Ah, so it is,’ muttered Evan, eyeing a print.  ’The Douglas and the Percy:  “he took the dead man by the hand.”  What an age it seems since I last saw that.  There’s Sir Hugh Montgomery on horseback—­he hasn’t moved.  Don’t you remember my father calling it the Battle of Tit-for-Tat?  Gallant Percy!  I know he wished he had lived in those days of knights and battles.’

‘It does not much signify whom one has to make clothes for,’ observed Mrs. Mel.  Her son happily did not mark her.

‘I think we neither of us were made for the days of pence and pounds,’ he continued.  ’Now, mother, sit down, and talk to me about him.  Did he mention me?  Did he give me his blessing?  I hope he did not suffer.  I’d have given anything to press his hand,’ and looking wistfully at the Percy lifting the hand of Douglas dead, Evan’s eyes filled with big tears.

‘He suffered very little,’ returned Mrs. Mel, ’and his last words were about you.’

‘What were they?’ Evan burst out.

’I will tell you another time.  Now undress, and go to bed.  When I talk to you, Van, I want a cool head to listen.  You do nothing but yawn yard-measures.’

The mouth of the weary youth instinctively snapped short the abhorred emblem.

‘Here, I will help you, Van.’

In spite of his remonstrances and petitions for talk, she took off his coat and waistcoat, contemptuously criticizing the cloth of foreign tailors and their absurd cut.

‘Have you heard from Louisa?’ asked Evan.

‘Yes, yes—­about your sisters by-and-by.  Now, be good, and go to bed.’

She still treated him like a boy, whom she was going to force to the resolution of a man.

Dandy’s sleeping-room was on the same floor as Evan’s.  Thither, when she had quitted her son, she directed her steps.  She had heard Dandy tumble up-stairs the moment his duties were over, and knew what to expect when the bottles had been in his way; for drink made Dandy savage, and a terror to himself.  It was her command to him that, when he happened to come across liquor, he should immediately seek his bedroom and bolt the door, and Dandy had got the habit of obeying her.  On this occasion he was vindictive against her, seeing that she had delivered him over to his enemy with malice prepense.  A good deal of knocking, and summoning of Dandy by name, was required before she was admitted, and the sight of her did not delight him, as he testified.

’I ‘m drunk!’ he bawled.  ‘Will that do for ye?’

Mrs. Mel stood with her two hands crossed above her apron-string, noting his sullen lurking eye with the calm of a tamer of beasts.