ld remind one that he was a grocer, for it was
the note of Edinburgh, of all lowland Scotland, to rise out of ordinary
life to a more than ordinary magnificence, and then to qualify that
magnificence by some cynical allusion to ordinary life. The old man
seemed to like Ellen, though she was very rude about his ham and said,
"If that's the best, then times have been hard for the pigs lately."
Yaverland gave to their bickering amenities an attention that dwelt not
so much on the words as the twanging, gibing intonations. But after they
got into the streets again a question and answer began to tease his
mind: "Would you be wanting your change in halfpence, Miss Melville?"

"Och, no, thank you, Mr. Lindsay."

They had come to the end of Ellen's shopping list and she was taking him
home through St. Patrick's Square. "Look at that lighted window, where
they've got a blue blind! That's where de Quincey stopped!" she said
excitedly, and he answered, "Oh, is it?... I say, why did the old chap
offer to give you change in halfpence?"

"Well, to-morrow's Sunday, you see."

"I'm afraid I don't. I'm stupid. Why do you want halfpence more on
Sunday than on any other day?"

"Why, for the plate. For the collection. In church. But we always put in
threepenny-bits. Mother's picked up a lot of English ways. What's taken
you?" She stared up in wonder at his laughter, until it broke on her
that she had unwittingly given him, an Englishman, food for the silly
English taunt that the Scotch are mean. "Och, you don't understand," she
began to stammer hastily. "I didn't mean that exactly."

And then a hot rage came on her. Why should she make excuses for her own
people, because this stranger who was less than nothing to her chose to
giggle? Wasn't he using his size, which was sheer luck, his experiences
in foreign lands, of which she was bitterly jealous, and his maleness,
which until she got a vote was a ground for hostility, to "come it over"
her? She said acidly, "I'm glad you're amused. I suppose you don't do
such things in England?" and at his laughing answer, "I don't know; I've
never been to Church in England. But I shouldn't think so," her
neatly-brushed and braided temper came down. She came to a sudden stop.
They were on the unfrequented pavement of Buccleuch Place, a street of
tall houses separated by so insanely wide a cobbled roadway that it had
none of the human, close-pressed quality of a street, but was desolate
with the nat