'Oh! Mary,' sighed Nessie rapturously, 'this is better than I expected. I could hug you and hug you. You're lovely. I've got my bonnie, big sister back. Was it not brave of me to write and ask you to come back? If he had found me out he would have taken my head off. You'll not let on it was me, though, will you?'
'No, indeed,' cried Mary fondly. 'I'll not say a word.'
'He'll be in soon,' said Nessie slowly, her face falling again at the thought of her father's imminent return. 'You know all about about his comin' to work in the Yard, I suppose.'
A faint colour suffused Mary's cheeks as she answered:
'Yes! I heard about it, just after Mamma's death.'
'Such a come-down!' said Nessie in a precocious tone. 'Poor Mamma was well out of it. It would have finished her if the other hadn't.' She paused and sighed, adding with a sort of sorrowful comfort, 'I would like us to go up and put some flowers on her grave some day soon. There's not a thing on it not even an artificial wreath.'
A silence now came between the sisters whilst each followed their own thoughts, then Mary started and said, 'I must go in and see to things, dear. I want to get everything ready. You wait here in the air, for I think it'll do you good. Wait and see how nice I'll have everything for you.'
Nessie gazed at her sister doubtfully.
'You're not going to run away and leave me?' she demanded, as though she feared to allow Mary out of her sight. 'I'll come in and help you.'
'Nonsense! I'm used to this work,' replied Mary. 'Your business is to stay here and get an appetite for tea.'
Nessie loosed her sister's hand, and as she watched her go through the back door, cried warningly:
'I'll keep my eye on you through the window to see you don't go away.'
Inside the house, Mary set to work to restore cleanliness and some degree of order to the kitchen and, having assumed an apron which she discovered in the scullery, and directing her activities with the precision of experience, she quickly burnished and blackened the grate, lit the fire and swept the hearth, scrubbed the floor, dusted the furniture and rubbed the window panes to some degree of brightness. Then, searching for the whitest table cover she could find, she spread this upon the table and commenced to prepare as appetising a tea as the scanty contents of the larder would permit. Standing there by the stove, flushed and a little breathless from the rapidity of her exertions, she seemed to have sloughed off the intervening years and as though she had never suffered the bitter experiences of her life to be again a girl engaged in getting ready the evening meal of the household. While she remained thus, she heard a slow shuffling tread in the lobby, followed by the creak of the kitchen door as it swung open, and turning, she observed the bowed and decrepit figure of old Grandma Brodie come hobbling into the room, diffidently, uncertainly, like a spectre moving among the ruin of its past glory. Mary left the stove, advanced, and called,
'Grandma!'
The old woman looked slowly up, presenting her yellow, cracked visage with its sunken cheeks and puckered lips, and staring incredulously, as though she too observed a phantom, she muttered at length,
'Mary! It canna surely be Mary.' Then she shook her head, dismissing the evidence of her aged eyes as unthinkable, removed her gaze from Mary, and with an indeterminate step moved towards the scullery, whispering to herself:
'I maun get some tea thegither for him. James' tea maun be got ready.'
'I'm getting the tea, Grandma,' exclaimed Mary; 'there's no need for you to worry about it. Come and sit in your chair,' and taking the other's arm she led her, tottering but unresisting, to her old seat by the fire, into which the crone subsided with a vacant and unheeding stare. As Mary began, however, to journey to and fro from the scullery to the kitchen and the table assumed gradually an appearance such as it had not borne for months, the old woman's eye became more lucid and looking from a plate of hot pancakes, steaming and real, to Mary's face, she passed her blue-lined, transparent hand tremulously over her brows and muttered, 'Does he know you're back?'
'Yes, Grandma! I wrote and said I was coming,' replied Mary.
'Is he goin' to let you bide here?' croaked the other. 'Maybe he'll put ye out again. When was that? Was it before Marg'et deed? I canna think. Your hair looks unco' bonnie that way.' Her gaze then faded and she seemed to lose interest, murmuring disconsolately as she turned towards the fire, 'I canna eat so weel without my teeth.'
'Would you like a hot pancake and butter?' asked Mary in a coaxing tone.
'Would I no'!' replied the other instantly. 'Where is't?'
Mary gave the old woman her pancake, saw her seize it avidly and, crouch ing over the fire, begin eagerly to suck it to its destruction. Suddenly she was aroused from her contemplation by a whisper in her ear:
'Please, I would like one too, Mary dear!' Nessie had come in and was now presenting a flatly suppliant palm, waiting to have it covered by the warm solace of a new-made pancake.
'You'll not have one; you'll have two,' cried Mary recklessly. 'Yes! As many as you like. I've made plenty.'
'They're good,' exclaimed Nessie appreciatively. 'Good as good! You've made them so quick too; and my word, what a change you've made in the room! It's like old times again! As light as a feather! That's the way my mother used to make them, and these are just as good, ay, better than we used to get. Yum yum they're lovely!'
As Mary listened whilst Nessie talked on in this fashion and watched her quick, nervous gestures as she ate, she began to study her more intently than she had hitherto done, and slowly an impression of vague but deep uneasiness stole in upon her. The facile, running speech of her sister, the jerky and slightly uncontrolled movements perceptible now on her closer observation, seemed to betoken a state of unconscious nervous tension which alarmed her, and as she traced the thin contours of the other's growing body and noted her faintly hollowed cheeks and temples she said involuntarily:
'Nessie dear, are you sure you're feeling all right?'
Nessie stuffed the last of the pancake into her mouth before she replied expressively:
'I'm getting better and better especially since I've had that. Mary's pancakes are good but Mary herself is better.' She chewed for a moment then solemnly added, 'I've felt real bad once or twice, but I'm right as the mail now.'
Her sudden idea was, of course, mere nonsense, thought Mary, but nevertheless she determined to use every effort in her power to obtain for Nessie some respite from the studies which seemed, at last, to be overtaxing the inadequate strength of her immature frame. A strong feeling, partly from love of her sister, but chieflv from a strong maternal impulse towards the other's weakness, gripped her, and she laid her arm protectingly round Nessie's narrow shoulders,
drew her close and murmured warmly, 'I'll do my best for you, dear. I really will. There's nothing I wouldn't do to see you look happy and well.'
Whilst the sisters stood together thus the old woman raised her head from the fire and, as she considered them, a sudden, penetrating insight seemed to flash through the obscurity of her senile mind, for she remarked sharply:
'Don't let him see ye like that. Don't hing thegither and show you're so fond o' one another in front of him. Na! Na! He'll have no interference wi' Nessie. Let her be, let her be.' The edge in her voice was blunted as she uttered these last words, her gaze again became opaque and, with a slow, unconcealed yawn she turned away, muttering,
'I'm wantin' my tea. Is it not tea time yet? Is't not time for James to be in?'
Mary looked interrogatively at her sister and the shadow fell again on Nessie's brow as she remarked moodily:
'You can infuse the tea. He'll be in any minute now. Then you'll see for yourself the minute I've finished a cup it'll be the signal for me to be shoved off into the parlour. I'm tired to death of it.'
Mary did not reply but went into the scullery to infuse the tea, and filled now by a sudden, private fear at the immediate prospect of meeting her father, the unselfish consideration of her sister slipped for the moment from her mind and she began to anticipate, tremblingly, the manner of his greeting. Her eyes, that were fixed unseeingly upon the steamy clouds issuing from the boiling kettle, flinched as she recollected how he had kicked her brutally as she lay in the hall, how that blow had been in part responsible for the pneumonia which had nearly killed her, and
