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Updated: May 6, 2025
As they left the hang-dog figure that so lately was a respected Writer to the Signet, they said to one another that all was over socially with Andrew Walkingshaw. And it had been so public, so dramatic, that they feared of course they hoped against hope, but still they feared that the fine old business could not but suffer too.
"What is it now?" he snapped. "Could you tell me," asked the nurse, "where Mr. Walkingshaw keeps his cigars?" "Cigars!" he cried. "He is very set upon one." Andrew silently opened a cupboard and handed her a box of cigars. Then, still in silence, he seated himself before the fire and frowned at the dancing flames.
Andrew stiffly resumed his seat. "Yes, I am busy," he replied, and took up the pleadings again. But his father ignored the hint. Straddling comfortably before the fire, he remarked "Frank and I have been up to Perthshire." Andrew looked up quickly, but merely answered "Oh, indeed?" "We've been seeing Ellen." "What about?" Mr. Walkingshaw threw himself into a chair.
"Oh, I've given up that sort of thing years ago; but of course, if you're keen to go, I might stretch a point." Mr. Walkingshaw looked at him doubtfully out of the corner of his eye and answered nothing. A little later the two old friends had grown more merrily confidential than they had been since the days of their youth.
"But I don't understand what's the 'complication'?" She began to smile shyly "Lucas, don't you think don't you see there's nothing else. I must be the complication here." "Ahem!" coughed Mr. Walkingshaw. The lovers endeavored to look as though the artist had been merely posing his patron's daughter. "Well?" inquired that patron genially. Lucas had not altogether lost his ready audacity.
Jean flushed slightly, but answered as demurely as ever "It is his wish." "Ah, I see!" exclaimed Mrs. Dunbar bitterly, "I thought there was a woman's hand in this affair." "Do you mean another woman's hand?" The injured lady began uneasily to realize that there was a fresh factor in the situation. But who would have dreamt of little Jean Walkingshaw being dangerous?
"Intricate business," he answered her, with a fresh salute. "Poor old Charles Munro is a kind of relation of mine," she observed. He eyed her with more surprise than passion. "Oh! I didn't know that." "I haven't written to him for years. I think I must send him a letter this week." Mr. Walkingshaw realized that he was marrying brains as well as beauty.
Walkingshaw. Then, not unlike that gentleman, it diverges at right angles; and having once begun, goes on doubling for the remainder of its existence, shedding, as it gets round each corner, the more orthodox houses that once bore it company, till at last it becomes a mere devious lane, the haunt of low eccentric buildings; in places, owing to a casual tree or two, positively shady.
But then such rum things did happen in this amusing world that it was never worth while worrying. Stroking the cat and sipping his tea, Mr. Walkingshaw conversed pleasantly with his sister. Jean and Frank had gone into the country, and the two sat alone together in the drawing-room. "Brown?" said Miss Walkingshaw. "I never knew the Dunbars had a relative of that name. Who will he be?"
"Don't tell any one!" he added, and then immediately realized that at the same time he must be losing a little of that valuable discretion which had characterized the head of Walkingshaw & Gilliflower. "My dear Heriot, this sounds suspicious." He realized now the penalties for indiscretion. "I am going to see him on particularly private business. We do not wish it to get talked about."
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