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It may be questioned whether this promise of a good home awoke any pleasing associations or carried with it any definite meaning to Baubie Wishart's mind.
Baubie Wishart presented none of these characteristics: her face was simply filthy; her hair was a red-brown, loosened tangle that reminded one painfully of oakum in its first stage. And she looked as if she deserved a whipping, and defied it too.
Miss Mackenzie buttoned up her sealskin coat, and pulling on a pair of warm gloves beckoned Baubie, who rose with alacrity: "Where do your father and mother live?" "Kennedy's Lodgings, in the Gressmarket, mem." "I know the place," observed Miss Mackenzie, to whom, indeed, most of these haunts were familiar. "Take me there now, Baubie." They set out together.
Baubie forgot also in her present well-nourished condition the never-failing sensation of hunger that had gone hand in hand with these departed glories. But even if she had remembered every circumstance of her former life, and the privations and sufferings, she would still have pined for its freedom.
Baubie Wishart's eyes wandered all round the room, and with one toe she swept up a little mass of dust before she answered in a voice every tone of which spoke unwilling truthfulness, "Just whiles Saturday nichts." "Is he kind to you?" "Ay," looking up quickly, "excep' just whiles when he's fou Saturday nichts, ye ken and then he beats me; but he's rale kind when he's sober."
I hear the bugles sounding: 'tis the signal for the fight. Now, may God protect us, mother, as He ever does the right. "Baubie Wishart," cried the astonished mistress, "what do you mean?" The singer was just at the close of a verse: Hear the battle-cry of Freedom! how it swells upon the air! Yes, we'll rally round the standard or we'll perish nobly there.
As she passed by the fire she profited by the momentary abstraction of the people who were cooking to snap up and make her own a brace of unconsidered trifles in the shape of onions which were lying near them. These, with the piece of bread, she concealed on her person, and then returned to Miss Mackenzie, who was now in the passage. "Baubie," said that lady, "I will send some one here about you.
"Ki! ki! ki!" breathed Baubie discreetly. She felt lonely, and the cat looked a comfortable big creature, and belonged to the house doubtless, for he stared at her with an interested, questioning look. Presently he moved.
"But that's waur than a bairn. You'll be worn oot wi' the care o' it. I ken by the heartaches my ain Baubie gied me. Early and late she keepit me in het water." "I hear tell that oor Maggie is just extraordinar' handsome and extraordinar' self-willed. I ken I'm going to sorrow, but her fayther was my brither, and I'll hae to do my duty, or be a meeserable woman."
Miss Mackenzie stood for a few minutes, unnoticed apparently, looking about her at the motley crowd. Baubie on entering the room had raised herself for a second on tiptoe to look into a distant corner, and then, remarking to herself, half audibly, "His boords is gane," subsided, and contented herself with watching Miss Mackenzie's movements. There seemed to be no one to do the honors.
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