m art magazines, but which they had kept because no secondhand
dealers would give any money for them, and the walls had to be covered
somehow. And there was nothing pretty anywhere.

The little brown bird of a woman was asking in a kind, interested way if
he were a stranger to Edinburgh, and he was telling her how long he had
been in Broxburn and what he did there, and when he mentioned cordite
she made the clucking, concerned noise that elderly ladies always made
when they heard that his work lay among high explosives. And Ellen's
rootings in the untidy desk culminated in a sudden sweep of mixed paper
stuff on to the floor, at which Mrs. Melville remonstrated, "Ellen, it
beats me how you can be so neat with your work and such a bad, untidy
girl about the house!" and Ellen exclaimed, "Och, drat the thing, it
must be upstairs!" and ran out of the room with her face turned away
from them.

They heard a clatter on the staircase, followed by violent noises
overhead as if a chest was being dashed open and the contents flung on
the floor. "Dear, dear!" ejaculated Mrs. Melville adoringly. She began
to look him over with a maternal eye. "For all you've been six months in
the North, you've not lost your tan," she said.

"Well, I had a good baking in Spain and South America," he answered.
Their eyes met and they smiled. In effect she had said, "Well, you are a
fine fellow," and he had answered, "Yes, perhaps I am."

"I like a man to travel," she went on, tossing her head and looking
altogether fierce Ellen's mother. "I never go into the bank without
looking at the clerks and thinking what sumphs they are, sitting on
their high stools." She seemed to have come to some conclusion to treat
him as one of the family, for she retrieved her knitting from the
mantelpiece and turned her armchair more cosily to the fire, and began a
sauntering of the tongue that he knew meant that she liked him. "I hope
you don't think Ellen a wild girl, running about to these meetings all
alone. It's not what I would like, of course, but I say nothing, for
this Suffrage business keeps the bairn amused. I'm not much of a
companion to her. I'm getting on, you see. She was my youngest."

"The youngest!" he exclaimed. "I didn't know. I thought she was an only
child." He flushed at this betrayal of the interest he felt in her.

"She's that now. But I had three others. They all died before Ellen was
born. They sickened for influenza on a bad winter voyage