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Updated: June 26, 2025
On that happiest day of all the week, he never set his foot out of doors, except to run twice to Mistress Croale's, once to fetch the dinner which she supplied from her own table, and for which Sir George regularly paid in advance on Saturday before commencing his potations.
At sight of it, Mistress Croale's eyes shot flame. Jean poured out a glassful, took a sip, and offered it to Janet. Janet declining it, Jean, invaded possibly by some pity of her miserable aspect, offered it to Mistress Croale.
But he was always too much ashamed to begin to drink before the child: he hated to uncork the bottle before him. What followed was in regular Sunday routine. "Gang ower to Mistress Croale's, Gibbie," he said, "wi' my compliments." Away ran Gibbie, nothing loath, and at his knock was admitted. Mistress Croale sat in the parlour, taking her tea, and expecting him. She was always kind to the child.
Outwardly calm, he was within eager as a lover to reach Lucky Croale's back parlour. His hand trembled with expectation as he laid from it the awl, took from between his knees the great boot on the toe of which he had been stitching a patch, lifted the yoke of his leather apron over his head, and threw it aside.
All Mistress Croale's customers made a point of looking decent in the street strove, in their very consciousness, to carry the expression of being on their way to their tea, not their toddy or if their toddy, then not that they desired it, but merely that it was their custom always of an afternoon: man had no choice he must fill space, he must occupy himself; and if so, why not Mistress Croale's the place, and the consumption of whisky the occupation?
Sitting and brooding thus, he fell into a dreamy state, in which, brokenly, from here and there, pictures of his former life grew out upon his memory. Suddenly, plainer than all the rest, came the last time he stood under Mistress Croale's window, waiting to help his father home.
But the excess of his joy had not yet turned to light, was not yet passing from him in physical flame: whence then the glow that illumined the court? He looked up. The windows of Mistress Croale's bedroom were glaring with light! He opened the door hurriedly and darted up. On the stair he was met by the smell of burning, which grew stronger as he ascended. He opened Mistress Croale's door.
Any thoughtful person who knew Mistress Croale's history, would have feared much for her, and hoped a little: her so-called fate was still undecided. In the mean time she made a living, did not get into debt, spent an inordinate portion of her profits in drink, but had regained and was keeping up a kind and measure of respectability.
One night in the spring, entering Lucky Croale's common room, he saw there for the first time a negro sailor, whom the rest called Sambo, and was at once taken with his big, dark, radiant eyes, and his white teeth continually uncovering themselves in good-humoured smiles. Sambo had left the vessel in which he had arrived, was waiting for another, and had taken up his quarters at Lucky Croale's.
He had no way of understanding or interpreting it save by calling to his aid the sad knowledge of evil, gathered in his earliest years. Except in the laird and Fergus and the gamekeeper, he had not, since fleeing from Lucky Croale's houff, seen a trace of unreasonable anger in any one he knew. Robert or Janet had never scolded him. He might go and come as he pleased.
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