As she knocked lightly at the front door, the old kid glove came loose in her hand—an omen! One glance up and down the street to see that no one noticed her, and then she slipped it in her pocket, with a guilty countenance. She was not young, at least she was not in her ’teens, but young enough to do a thing like that for luck and her liking of Daniel Dyce. Yet her courage failed her, and when Kate came to the door the first thing she handed to her was the glove.
“It fell off,” she said. “I hope it means that it’s no longer needed. And this is a little thing for Miss Lennox, Kate; you will give her it with my compliments. I hear there’s an improvement?”
“You wouldna _believe_ it!” said Kate. “Thank God, she’ll soon be carrying-on as bad as ever!”
Mr Dyce would not have cared a rap that morning if he had come upon his clerks at Catch-the-Ten, or even playing leapfrog on their desks. He was humming a psalm you may guess at as he looked at the documents heaped on his table—his calf-bound books and the dark japanned deed-boxes round his room.
“Everything just the same, and business still going on!” he said to his clerk. “Dear me! dear me! what a desperate world! Do you know, I had the notion that everything was stopped. No, when I think of it I oftener fancied all this was a dream.”
“Not Menzies _v._ Kilblane at any rate,” said the clerk, with his hand on a bulky Process, for he was a cheery soul and knew the mind of Daniel Dyce.
“I daresay not,” said the lawyer. “That plea will last a while, I’m thinking. And all about a five-pound fence! Let you and me, Alexander, thank our stars there are no sick bairns in the house of either Menzies or Kilblane, for then they would understand how much their silly fence mattered, and pity be on our canty wee Table-of-Fees!” He tossed over the papers with an impatient hand. “Trash!” said he. “What frightful trash! I can’t be bothered with them—not to-day. They’re no more to me than a docken leaf. And last week they were almost everything. You’ll have heard the child has got the turn?”
“I should think I did!” said Alexander. “And no one better pleased to hear it!”
“Let me think, now—seven, isn’t it? A big responsibility.”
“Not so bad as long’s we have the health,” said Alexander.