Mary stood dumbly envisaging the frowsy room, then she looked it Nessie and said wonderingly:
"Does Father put up with this?"
"Put up with it!" cried the other; "he doesn't even notice it, and he looks worse even than this room, with his clothes hanging off him, and his eyes sunk away down in his head. If I try to lay a finger on the place to clear it up he roars my head off and keeps shouting at me to get on with my work and threatens me in all manner of ways, simply scares me out of my wits."
"Is it a’ bad as that, then?" murmured Mary, almost to herself.
"It's worse," cried Nessie mournfully, looking up at her sister with wide eyes. "Grandma does the best she can, but she's near helpless now. Nobody can manage him. You and me better go away somewhere quick before anything happens to us." Her attitude seemed to entreat her sister to fly instantly with her from the ruins of their home. But Mary shook her head, and speaking firmly, cheerfully, said:
"We can't run away, dear. We'll do the best we can together. I'll soon have the place different for you," and, advancing to the window, she threw it up and let a gust of the cool, sharp wind come rushing into the room. "There, now; we'll let the breeze in for a little, while we have a walk in the back, then I'll come in and straighten things out." She took off her hat and coat and, laying them on the sofa, turned again to Nessie, put her arm round the other's thin waist, and drew her out of the back door into the outer air.
"Oh, Mary!" cried Nessie ecstatically, pressing her side close against her sister as the two began to walk slowly up and down. "It's wonderful to have you back. You're so strong, I've an awful faith in you. Surely things will go right now." Then she added inconsequently, "What's been happening to you? What have you been doing all this time?"
Mary held out her free hand for a moment.
"Just using these," she said lightly; "and hard work never killed anybody, so here I am."
The younger girl looked with a shocked gaze at the rough calloused palm, seared by a deep white scar; and turning her eyes upwards remarked wonderingly:
"What gave you that big mark? Was it a cut ye got?"
A quick expression of pain flitted across Mary's face as she replied:
"That was it, Nessie; but it's all better now. I told you never to mind about your stupid old sister. It's wee you we're to think about."
Nessie laughed happily, then stopped short in amazement.
"Would ye believe it!" she exclaimed, in an awestruck tone; "that was me laughin' a thing I haven't done for months. Goodness! I could be downright 'happy if it wasn't for the thought of all the work for that old Bursary exam." She shivered exaggeratedly. "That's the worse thing of any."
"Will you not get it?" asked Mary solicitously.
"Of course I will!" exclaimed the other, with a toss of her head. "I mean to get it all right, just to show them all the way some of them have behaved to me at school is a disgrace. But it's Father. He goes on about it and worries me to death. I wish he would only leave me alone." She shook her head and added, in an old-fashioned tone that might have been her mother's voice, "My head's like to split the way he raves at me sometimes. He's got me away to a shadow."
Mary looked commiseratingly at the fragile form and thin precocious face beside her and, squeezing her sister's puny arm reassuringly, she said:
"I'll soon get you all right, my girl. I know exactly what to do and I've a few tricks up my sleeve that might surprise you."
Nessie turned, and using a favourite catchword of their childhood, remarked with an assumption or great simplicity:
"Is it honky-tonky tricks you've got up there, Mary?"
The sisters gazed at each other while the years fell away from them, then suddenly they smiled into each other's eyes and laughed aloud together, with a sound which echoed strangely in that desolate back garden.
"Oh! Mary," sighed Nessie rapturously, "this is better than I expected. I could hug you and hug you. You're lovely. I've got my bonnie, big sister back. Was it not brave of me to write and ask you to come back? If he had found me out he would have taken my head off. You'll not let on it was me, though, will you?"
"No, indeed," cried Mary fondly. "I'll not say a word."
"He'll be in soon," said Nessie slowly, her face falling again at the thought of her father's imminent return. "You know all about about his comin' to work in the Yard, I suppose."
A faint colour suffused Mary's cheeks as she answered:
"Yes! I heard about it, just after Mamma's death."
"Such a come-down!" said Nessie in a precocious tone. "Poor Mamma was well out of it. It would have finished her if the other hadn't." She paused and sighed, adding with a sort of sorrowful comfort, "I would like us to go up and put some flowers on her grave some day soon. There's not a thing on it not even an artificial wreath."
A silence now came between the sisters whilst each followed their own thoughts, then Mary started and said, "I must go in and see to things, dear. I want to get everything ready. You wait here in the air, for I think it'll do you good. Wait and see how nice I'll have everything for you."
Nessie gazed at her sister doubtfully.
"You're not going to run away and leave me?" she demanded, as though she feared to allow Mary out of her sight. "I'll come in and help you."
"Nonsense! I'm used to this work," replied Mary. "Your business is to stay here and get an appetite for tea."
Nessie loosed her sister's hand, and as she watched her go through the back door, cried warningly:
"I'll keep my eye on you through the window to see you don't go away."
Inside the house, Mary set to work to restore cleanliness and some degree of order to the kitchen and, having assumed an apron which she discovered in the scullery, and directing her activities with the precision of experience, she quickly burnished and blackened the grate, lit the fire and swept the hearth, scrubbed the floor, dusted the furniture and rubbed the window panes to some degree of brightness. Then, searching for the whitest table cover she could find, she spread this upon the table and commenced to prepare as appetising a tea as the scanty contents of the larder would permit. Standing there by the stove, flushed and a little breathless from the rapidity of her exertions, she seemed to have sloughed off the intervening years and as though she had never suffered the bitter experiences of her life to be again a girl engaged in getting ready the evening meal of the household. While she remained thus, she heard a slow shuffling tread in the lobby, followed by the creak of the kitchen door as it swung open, and turning, she observed the bowed and decrepit figure of old Grandma Brodie come hobbling into the room, diffidently, uncertainly, like a spectre moving among the ruin of its past glory. Mary left the stove, advanced, and called,
"Grandma!"
The old woman looked slowly up, presenting her yellow, cracked visage with its sunken cheeks and puckered lips, and staring incredulously, as though she too observed a phantom, she muttered at length,
"Mary! It canna surely be Mary." Then she shook her head, dismissing the evidence of her aged eyes as unthinkable, removed her gaze from Mary, and with an indeterminate step moved towards the scullery, whispering to herself:
"I maun get some tea thegither for him. James' tea maun be got ready."
"I'm getting the tea, Grandma," exclaimed Mary; "there's no need for you to worry about it. Come and sit in your chair," and taking the other's arm she led her, tottering but unresisting, to her old seat by the fire, into which the crone subsided with a vacant and unheeding stare. As Mary began, however, to journey to and fro from the scullery to the kitchen and the table assumed gradually an appearance such as it had not borne for months, the old woman's eye became more lucid and looking from a plate of hot pancakes, steaming and real, to Mary's face, she passed her blue-lined, transparent hand tremulously over her brows and muttered, "Does he know you're back?"