LITMIR.BIZ

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cloak that dangled from the stranger’s waist.

      ‘You can’t get this way,’ said Blackeyes. ‘It’s to my house.’

      ‘It’s nae to your hoose,’ cried Martha. ‘It’s to my hoose and it’s my mither’s cloak ye’ve got on.’

      ‘It’s her hoose richt eneugh,’ said Andy. ‘She bides there.’

      ‘She disna bide there,’ said Martha. ‘It’s nae her hoose and it’s nae her cloak. Ye’ve stealed that cloak. It’s my mither’s cloak.’

      And with that Martha sprang at the puddle, leaped short, and fell in the mire on the farther side.

      ‘Sic a mucky mess ye’re in, Matty,’ said Andy with deep satisfaction. ‘You’ll get yer hi-ma-nanny when ye win hame. Yer mither’s in an awfu’ ill teen the day. Isna she, Peter?’

      ‘Ay,’ said Peter, without looking up from his mud-grubbing. ‘She’s terrible short i’ the cut.’

      ‘Ye’ll fair get it, Matty. I wadna hae a mither like yon. She’s a tongue, yon woman, an’ nae name feart to use it,’ went on Andy, repeating lusciously the judgements current in his home on Mrs. Ironside. ‘Hisna she, Peter?’

      ‘Ay,’ said Peter, intoning his portion of the antiphon from the mud. ‘She’s a tongue that wad clip cloots.’

      ‘An’ a gey heavy han’ as weel,’ chanted Andy. ‘She fair gied it to Peter the day as she gaed by. She fair laid till him. Didna she, Peter?’

      ‘I dinna care a doit,’ said Peter, altering the antiphon abruptly under stress of recollection.

      Martha attended to neither. She was now on the black-browed stranger’s side of the puddle and promptly laid violent hands on the cloak. Blackeyes wrenched herself free, pirouetted out of reach, and over one shoulder, with the most mischievous little sparkle in the world, thrust out her tongue at Martha.

      Martha flew upon her, her limbs dancing of themselves with indignation. The black-burnished lady raised a pair of active sun-browned arms in readiness for the onslaught, and as soon as Martha was near enough, flung them tempestuously round her neck and smacked down a slobbery kiss upon her mouth. Martha had no time to adjust herself to the astonishment of a kiss. Her lifted hand came against the stranger’s cheek with a sounding slap, and turning she ran until she reached the cottage.

      On the flag by the door she paused and stared for a minute or two at the untidy thatch, the jagged break at the bottom of the door, the litter of cans and leaky pots and potato parings beside the pump. When she went in, her father was alone by the fire, in shirt sleeves, his sweaty socks thrust up against the mantel.

      ‘Ye’re there, are ye?’ he said to his daughter.

      Martha said, ‘Imphm,’ and climbed into the chair opposite her father.

      Not a word from either for a while.

      Then: ‘Faither.’

      ‘Weel?’

      ‘Fa’s the lassie wi’ the black pow?’

      ‘It’s a lassie come to bide,’ said Geordie slowly, ‘Yer mither brocht her.’

      Silence again, through which Martha’s thoughts were busy with the queerness of family relationships. Other people’s families were more or less stationary. Martha’s fluctuated. It was past her comprehension.

      ‘Faur’s mither?’ she asked.

      ‘She’s awa oot.’

      Geordie did not think it necessary to add that she was out in search of more family. His wife’s preoccupation with other people’s babies was a matter for much slow rumination on the part of Geordie. He knew well enough that she did not make it pay. But Emmeline would undertake any expedition to mother a child for gain. She liked the fuss and the pack in her two-roomed stone-floored cottage. The stress of numbers excused her huddery ways. Some of the babies died, some were reclaimed, some taken to other homes. Martha accepted them as dumbly as her father, brooding a little − but only a little − on the peculiarities of a changing population.

      Geordie himself interrupted her thoughts this evening. It had occurred to him to wonder why she had come home.

      Martha explained. Roused from her brooding, she realized that she was hungry.

      ‘Is’t nae near tea-time, faither?’ she asked.

      Geordie took his pipe from his mouth and surveyed his daughter with trouble in his eyes.

      ‘The tea’s by lang syne,’ he said. ‘Did ye nae get ony fae yer aunt?’

      ‘Nuh … Ay … I some think I had ma tea, but it was at dinner-time. I hadna ony dinner. She was ower busy wi’ the cairds to mak’ ony, an’ syne whan she heard she bude to ging to Birleybeg there wasna time.’

      This preposterous situation slowly made itself clear to Geordie’s intelligence. Aunt Josephine had neglected for a new-fangled triviality like cards the great primordial business of a meal. It was a ludicrous disproportion. Geordie flung back his head against the chair and roared with laughter.

      There was something elemental about Geordie’s laughter. It flooded up out of the depths of him − not gurgling, or spouting, or splashing up, but rising full-tide with a steady roaring boom. It had subterranean reserves of force, that no common joke was able to exhaust. Long after other people had fatigued their petty powers of laughter at some easy joke, the vast concourses of Geordie’s merriment were gathering within him and crashing out in mightily renewed eruptions of unwearied vigour. He found a joke wholesome until seventy times seven.

      So he laughed, not once, but half a dozen times, over Miss Leggatt’s departure from the common sanities. But after his seventh wind or so, he put his pipe back in his mouth and drew at it awhile in silence. Then he hitched himself out of his chair, with the resolution of a man who has viewed the situation impartially and made up his mind.

      ‘Yer mither disna like me touchin’ her thingies,’ he said, ‘but we’ll need to get a bit piece till ye.’

      Martha did not budge. She lay back in her chair with her legs dangling, and awaited the pleasure of her Ganymede.

      ‘Here’s a sup milk an’ a saft biscuit,’ said Ganymede, returning (silent-footed as became a banquet). ‘That’ll suit ye better’n the cakes.’

      Martha nodded and bit deep into the floury cushion of the biscuit. She loved soft biscuits.

      She lay still in the chair and nibbled luxuriously, her thoughts drifting.

      Ganymede resumed his leisure. He sprawled, his stockinged feet upon the arm of Martha’s chair. They gave her a happy, companionable feeling. She moved the least thing in her corner so as to nudge them gently. Ganymede gave her in response the tenderest, most tranquil, subjovial little kick. Father and daughter shared a silence of the gods, in which all is said that need be said.

      The clatter of a distracted earth broke by and by upon Olympus. Noisy voices, with anger in the flying rumours they sent ahead.

      ‘Here’s yer mither comin’ in aboot,’ said Geordie, disposing of his legs, ‘an’ I some doot she’s in ane o’ her ill teens.’

      Geordie’s diagnosis of his wife’s spiritual condition was correct. Mrs. Ironside appeared, herding in Blackeyes. Her very skirts were irate. The three-year old bairn who hung in the wind of them was in some danger of blowing off. A baby kept her arms steadier than they might otherwise have been. Mrs. Ironside had multiplied her family by two.

      Her wrath against Blackeyes was checked by the sight of Martha, motionless in the depths of her chair.

      The situation was explained.

      ‘Ye maun jist ging back to the school, than,’ said Mrs. Ironside, eyeing her daughter.

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