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.
Passionate tears broke over Martha’s cheeks.
To make herself conspicuous by marching back to school when Aunt Josephine herself had made arrangement for her absence, publicly to give report of the drab conclusion to her travels, was more than Martha’s equanimity could face. She went hot with shame at the very thought.
She battered the arm of the chair with her fists.
‘I canna ging back,’ she sobbed. ‘I canna ging back.’
‘You’re a queer ane,’ said her mother. ‘Ye hinna a please. Temper whan we tak ye fae the school an’ temper whan we pit ye back.’
‘She can bide aboot the doors, surely,’ said Geordie.
‘I canna hae her trallopin’ at my tails a’ day lang. An’ look at the mess she wad be in. She’s a gey lookin’ objeck as it is,’ said Emmeline, whose appreciation of cleanliness varied inversely with the godliness of her calm. The more serene she was, the more she tolerated dirt.
‘I gaed dunt intil the puddle,’ said Martha miserably.
‘Fit way cud she help it, whan she hadna had ony dinner?’ said her father: a notable man for logic of a strictly informal variety.
Blackeyes was crying, ‘It was me that made her do it,’ and Martha, suddenly remembering her parcel, jumped up and said,
‘But I got the mince.’
A
