BAUBIE WISHART.

"I have taken you at your word, you see, Miss Mackenzie. You told me not to give alms in the street, and to bring the begging children to you. So here is one now."

Thus introduced, the begging child was pushed forward into the room by the speaker, a lady who was holding her by one shoulder.

She was a stunted, slim creature, that might have been any age from nine to fourteen, barefooted and bareheaded, and wearing a Rob Roy tartan frock. She entered in a sidelong way that was at once timid and confidently independent, and stared all round her with a pair of large brown eyes. She did not seem to be in the least frightened, and when released by her guardian stood at ease comfortably on one foot, tucking the other away out of sight among the not too voluminous folds of her frock.

It was close on twelve o'clock of a March day in the poor sewing-women's workroom in Drummond street. The average number of women of the usual sort were collected together—a depressed and silent gathering. It seemed as if the bitter east wind had dulled and chilled them into a grayer monotony of look than usual, so that they might be in harmony with the general aspect which things without had assumed at its grim bidding. A score or so of wan faces looked up for a minute, but the child, after all, had nothing in her appearance that was calculated to repay attention, and the lady was known to them all. So "white seam" reasserted its old authority without much delay.

Miss Mackenzie laid down the scissors which she had been using on a bit of coarse cotton, and advanced in reply to the address of the newcomer. "How do you do? and where did you pick up this creature?" she asked, looking curiously at the importation.

"Near George IV. Bridge, on this side of it, and I just took hold of her and brought her off to you at once. I don't believe"—this was said sotto voce—"that she has a particle of clothing on her but that frock."

"Very likely.—What is your name, my child?"

"Baubie Wishart, mem." She spoke in an apologetic tone, glancing down at her feet, the one off duty being lowered for the purpose of inspection, which over, she hoisted the foot again immediately into the recesses of the Rob Roy tartan.

"Have you a father and mother?"

"Yes, mem."

"What does your father do?"

Baubie Wishart glanced down again in thought for an instant, then raised her eyes for the first time directly to her questioner's face: "He used to be a Christy man, but he canna be that any longer, sae he goes wi' boords."

"Why cannot he be a Christy man any longer?"

Down came the foot once more, and this time took up its position permanently beside the other: "Because mother drinks awfu', an' pawned the banjo for drink." This family history was related in the most matter-of-fact, natural way.

"And does your father drink too?" asked Miss Mackenzie after a short pause.

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."

"Were you ever at school?"

"No, mem," with a shake of the head that seemed to convey that she had something else, and probably better, to do.

"Did you ever hear of God?" asked the lady who had brought her.

"Ay, mem," answered Baubie quite readily: "it's a kind of a bad word I hear in the streets."

"How old are you?" asked both ladies simultaneously.

"Thirteen past," replied Baubie, with a promptness that made her listeners smile, suggesting as it did the thought that the question had been put to her before, and that Baubie knew well the import of her answer.

She grew more communicative now. She could not read, but, all the same, she knew two songs which she sang in the streets—"Before the Battle" and "After the Battle;" and, carried away by the thought of her own powers, she actually began to give proof of her assertion by reciting one of them there and then. This, however, was stopped at once. "Can knit too," she added then.

"Who taught you to knit?"

"Don' know. Wis at a Sunday-schuil too."

"Oh, you were? And what did you learn there?"

Baubie Wishart looked puzzled, consulted her toes in vain, and then finally gave it up.

"I should like to do something for her," observed her first friend: "it is time this street-singing came to an end."

"She is intelligent, clearly," said Miss Mackenzie, looking curiously at the child, whose appearance and bearing rather puzzled her. There was not a particle of the professional street-singer about Baubie Wishart, the child of that species being generally clean-washed, or at least soapy, of face, with lank, smooth-combed and greasy hair; and usually, too, with a smug, sanctimonious air of meriting a better fate. 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. She was just a female arab—an arab plus an accomplishment—bright, quick and inconsequent as a sparrow, and reeking of the streets and gutters, which had been her nursery.

"Yes," continued the good lady, "I must look after her."

"Poor little atom! I suppose you will find out where the parents live, and send the school-board officer to them. That is the usual thing, is it not? I must go, Miss Mackenzie. Good-bye for to-day. And do tell me what you settle for her."

Miss Mackenzie promised, and her friend took her departure.

"Go and sit by the fire, Baubie Wishart, for a little, and then I shall be ready to talk to you."

Nothing loath apparently, Baubie established herself at the end of the fender, and from that coign of vantage watched the on-goings about her with the stoicism of a red Indian. She showed no symptom of wonder at anything, and listened to the disquisitions of Miss Mackenzie and the matron as to the proper adjustment of parts—"bias," "straights," "gathers," "fells," "gussets" and "seams," a whole new language as it unrolled its complexities before her—with complacent indifference.

At last, all the web of cotton being cut up, the time came to go. 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 trotted in front, turning her head, dog-fashion, at every corner to see if she were followed. They reached the Grassmarket at last, and close to the corner of the West Bow found an entry with the whitewashed inscription above it, "Kennedy's Lodgings." Baubie glanced round to see if her friend was near, then vanished upward from her sight. Miss Mackenzie kilted her dress and began the ascent of the stairs, the steps of which, hollowed out as they were by the tread of centuries of human feet, afforded a not too safe footing.

Arrived at the third floor, she found Baubie waiting for her, breathless and panting.

"It's here," she said—"the big kitchen, mem."

A long, narrow passage lay before them, off which doors opened on all sides. Precipitating herself at one of these doors, Baubie Wishart, who could barely reach the latch, pushed it open, giving egress to a confusion of noises, which seemed to float above a smell of cooking, in which smell herrings and onions contended for the mastery.

It was a very large room, low-ceilinged, but well enough lighted by a couple of windows, which looked into a close behind. The walls had been whitewashed once upon a time, but the whitewash was almost lost to view under the decorations with which it was overlaid. These consisted of pictures cut out of the illustrated weekly papers or milliners' books. All sorts of subjects were represented: fashion-plates hung side by side with popular preachers and statesmen, race-horses and Roman Catholic saints; red-and white-draped Madonnas elbowed the "full-dress" heroines of the penny weeklies. It was a curious gallery, and a good many of the works of art had the merit of being antique. Generations of flies had emblazoned their deeds of prowess on the papers: streaks of candle-grease bore witness to the inquiring turn of mind, attracted by the letter-press, or the artistic proclivities of Kennedy's lodgers. It was about two, the dinner-hour probably, which accounted for the presence of so many people in the room. Most, but not all, seemed to be of the wandering class. They were variously employed. Some were sitting on the truckle-beds that ran round the walls; one or two were knitting or sewing; a cripple was mending baskets in one of the windows; and about the fire a group were collected superintending the operations which produced, though not unaided, the odors with which the room was reeking.

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. The inmates all looked at each other for a moment hesitatingly, then resumed their various occupations. A young woman, a sickly, livid-faced creature, rose from her place behind the door, and, advancing with a halting step, said to Miss Mackenzie, "Mistress Kennedy's no' in, an' Wishart's oot wi's boords."

"I wanted to see him about this child, who was found begging in the streets to-day."

Miss Mackenzie looked curiously at the woman, wondering if she could belong in any way to the Wishart family. She was a miserable object, seemingly in the last stage of consumption.

"Eh, mem," she answered hurriedly, and drawing nearer, "ye're a guid leddy, I ken, an' tak' t' lassie away oot o' this. The mither's an awfu' wuman: tak' her away wi' ye, or she'll sune be as bad. She'll be like mysel' and the rest o' them here."

"I will, I will," Miss Mackenzie said, shocked and startled, recoiling before the spirit-reeking breath of this warning spectre. "I will, I will," she repeated hastily. There was no use remaining any longer. She went out, beckoning to Baubie, who was busy rummaging about a bed at the top of the room.

Baubie had bethought her that it was time to take her father his dinner. So she slipped over to that corner of the big kitchen which was allotted to the Wishart family and possessed herself of a piece of a loaf which was hidden away 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. Now, don't let me hear of your singing in the streets or begging again. You will get into trouble if you do."

She was descending the stairs as she spoke, and she turned round when she had reached the entry: "You know the police will take you, Baubie."

"Yes, mem," answered Baubie, duly impressed.

"Well, now, I am going home. Stay: are you hungry?"

Without waiting for her answer, Miss Mackenzie entered a tiny shop close by, purchased a mutton-pie and handed it to Baubie Wishart, who received it with wondering reverence. Miss Mackenzie took her way home westward up the Grassmarket. She turned round before leaving it by way of King's Stables, and caught sight of Bauble's frock by the entry of Kennedy's Lodgings—a tiny morsel of color against the shadow of the huge gray houses. She thought of the big kitchen and its occupants, and the face and words of the poor girl, and promised herself that she would send the school-board officer to Kennedy's Lodgings that very night.

Baubie waited till her friend was well out of sight: then she hid her mutton-pie in the same place with the onions and the piece of bread, and started up the Grassmarket in her turn. She stopped at the first shop she passed and bought a pennyworth of cheese. Then she made her way to the Lothian road, and looked up and down it anxiously in search of the walking advertisement-man. He was not there, so she directed her course toward Princes street, and after promenading it as far east as the Mound, she turned up into George street, and caught sight of her father walking along slowly by the curbstone. It was not long before she overtook him.

"Od, lassie, I wis thinkin' lang," he began wearily as soon as he realized her apparition. Baubie did not wait for him to finish: with a peremptory nod she signified her will, and he turned round and followed her a little way down Hanover street. Then Baubie selected a flight of steps leading to a basement store, and throwing him a look of command flitted down and seated herself at the bottom. It was sheltered from the cold wind and not too much overlooked. Wishart shifted the boards from about his shoulders, and, following her, laid them against the wall at the side of the basement-steps, and sat down heavily beside her. He was a sickly-looking man, sandy-haired, with a depressed and shifty expression of face—not vicious, but weak and vacillating. Baubie seemed to have the upper hand altogether: every gesture showed it. She opened the paper that was wrapped about her fragment of rank yellow cheese, laid it down on the step between them, and then produced, in their order of precedence, the pie, the onions and the bread.

"Wha gied ye that?" asked Wishart, gazing at the mutton-pie.

"A leddy," replied Baubie, concisely.

"An' they?" pointing to the onions.

A nod was all the answer, for Baubie, who was hungry, was busy breaking the piece of loaf. Wishart with great care divided the pie without spilling much more than half its gravy, and began on his half of it and the biggest onion simultaneously. Baubie ate up her share of pie, declined cheese, and attacked her onion and a great piece of crust. The crust was very tough, and after the mutton-pie rather dry and tasteless, and she laid it down presently in her lap, and after a few minutes' passive silence began: "That," nodding at the cheese, or what was left of it rather, "wis all I got—ae penny. The leddy took me up till a hoose, an' anither are that wis there came doon hame and gaed in ben, an' wis speirin' for ye, an' says she'll gie me till the polis for singin' an' askin' money in t' streets, an' wants you to gie me till her to pit in schuil."

She stopped and fixed her eyes on him, watching the effect of her words. Wishart laid down his bread and cheese and stared back at her. It seemed to take some time for his brain to realize all the meaning of her pregnant speech.

"Ay," he said after a while, and with an effort, "I maun tak' ye to Glasgae, to yer aunt. Ye'll be pit in schuil if yer caught."

"I'll no bide," observed Baubie, finishing off her onion with a grimace. The raw onion was indeed strong and hot, even for Bauble's not too epicurean palate, but it had been got for nothing—a circumstance from which it derived a flavor which many people more dainty than Bauble Wishart find to be extremely appetizing.

"Bide!" echoed her father: "they'll mak' ye bide. Gin I had only the banjo agen!" sighed the whilom Christy man, getting up and preparing to adjust the boards once more.

The last crumb of the loaf was done, and Bauble, refreshed, got up too. "Whenll ye be hame?" she questioned abruptly when they had reached the top of the steps.

"Seven. Gaeway hame wi' ye, lassie, noo. Ye didna see her?" he questioned as he walked off.

"Na," replied Bauble, standing still and looking about her as if to choose which way she should take.

He sighed deeply, and moved off slowly on his way back to his post, with the listless, hopeless air that seems to belong to the members of his calling.

Bauble obeyed her parent's commands in so far as that she did go home, but as she took Punch and Judy in her course up the Mound, and diverged as far as a football match in the Meadows, it was nearly seven before Kennedy's Lodgings saw her again.

The following morning, shortly after breakfast, Miss Mackenzie's butler informed her that there was a child who wanted to speak with her in the hall. On going down she found Bauble Wishart on the mat.

"Where is your father? and why did he not come with you?" asked Miss Mackenzie, puzzled.

"He thoucht shame to come an' speak wi' a fine leddy like you." This excuse, plausible enough, was uttered in a low voice and with downcast eyes, but hardly was it pronounced when she burst out rapidly and breathlessly into what was clearly the main object of her visit: "But please, mem, he says he'll gie me to you if ye'll gie him the three shillin's to tak' the banjo oot o' the pawn."

This candid proposal took Miss Mackenzie's breath away. To become the owner of Baubie Wishart, even at so low a price, seemed to her rather a heathenish proceeding, with a flavor of illegality about it to boot. There was a vacancy at the home for little girls which might be made available for the little wretch without the necessity of any preliminary of this kind; and it did not occur to her that it was a matter of any moment whether Mr. Wishart continued to exercise the rôle of "sandwich-man" or returned to his normal profession of banjo-player. Baubie was to be got hold of in any case. With the muttered adjuration of the wretched girl in Kennedy's Lodgings echoing in her ears, Miss Mackenzie determined that she should be left no longer than could be helped in that company.

How earnest and matter of fact she was in delivering her extraordinary errand! thought Miss Mackenzie to herself, meeting the eager gaze of Baubie Wishart's eyes, looking out from beneath her tangle of hair like those of a Skye terrier.

"I will speak to your father myself, Baubie—tell him so—to-morrow, perhaps: tell him I mean to settle about you myself. Now go."

The least possible flicker of disappointment passed over Baubie's face. The tangled head drooped for an instant, then she bobbed by way of adieu and vanished.

That day and the next passed before Miss Mackenzie found it possible to pay her long-promised visit to Mr. Wishart, and when, about eleven in the forenoon, she once more entered the big kitchen in Kennedy's Lodgings, she was greeted with the startling intelligence that the whole Wishart family were in prison.

The room was as full as before. Six women were sitting in the middle of the floor teasing out an old hair mattress. There was the same odor of cooking, early as it was, and the same medley of noises, but the people were different. The basket-making cripple was gone, and in his place by the window sat a big Irish beggar-woman, who was keeping up a conversation with some one (a compatriot evidently) in a window of the close behind.

The mistress of the house came forward. She was a decent-looking little woman, but had rather a hard face, expressive of care and anxiety. On recognizing her visitor she curtsied: "The Wisharts, mem? Yes, they're a' in jail."

"All in jail?" echoed Miss Mackenzie. "Will you come outside and speak to me? There are so many people—"

"Eh yes, mem: I'm sure ye fin' the room closs. Eh yes, mem, the Wisharts are a' in the lock-up."

They were standing outside in the passage, and Mrs. Kennedy held the door closed by the latch, which she kept firmly grasped in her hand. It struck Miss Mackenzie as being an odd way to secure privacy for a privileged communication, to fasten the door of their room upon those inside. It was expressive, however.

"Ye see, mem," began the landlady, "Wishart's no a very bad man—jist weak in the heid like—but's wife is jist something awfu', an' I could not let her bide in a decent lodging-house. We hae to dra' the line somewhere, and I dra' it low enough, but she wis far below that. Eh, she's jist terrible! Wishart has a sister in Glasgae verra weel to do, an' I h'ard him say he'd gie the lassie to her if it wer na for the wife. The day the school-board gentleman wis here she came back: she'd been away, ye ken, and she said she'd become a t'otaller, an' so I sed she micht stay; but, ye see, when nicht came on she an' Wishart gaed out thegither, an' jist to celebrate their bein' frien's again she an' him gaed intil a public, an' she got uproarious drunk, an' the polis took her up. Wishart wis no sae bad, sae they let him come hame; but, ye see, he had tasted the drink, an' wanted mair, an' he hadna ony money. Ye see, he'd promised the gentleman who came here that he widna send Baubie oot to sing again. But he did send her oot then to sing for money for him, an' the polis had been put to watch her, an' saw her beg, an' took her up to the office, an' came back here for Wishart. An' so before the day was dune they were a' lockit up thegither."

Such was the story related to Miss Mackenzie. What was to be done with Baubie now? It was hardly fair that she should be sent to a reformatory among criminal children. She had committed no crime, and there was that empty bed at the home for little girls. She determined to attend the sheriff-court on Monday morning and ask to be given the custody of Baubie.

When Monday morning came, ten o'clock saw Miss Mackenzie established in a seat immediately below the sheriff's high bench. The Wisharts were among the first batch tried, and made their appearance from a side-door. Mrs. Wishart came first, stepping along with a resolute, brazen bearing that contrasted with her husband's timid, shuffling gait. She was a gypsy-looking woman, with wandering, defiant black eyes, and her red face had the sign-manual of vice stamped upon it. After her came Baubie, a red-tartan-covered mite, shrinking back and keeping as close to her father as she could. Baubie had favored her mother as to complexion: that was plain. The top of her rough head and her wild brown eyes were just visible over the panel as she stared round her, taking in with composure and astuteness everything that was going on. She was the most self-possessed of her party, for under Mrs. Wishart's active brazenness there could easily be seen fear and a certain measure of remorse hiding themselves; and Wishart seemed to be but one remove from imbecility.

The charges were read with a running commentary of bad language from Mrs. Wishart as her offences were detailed; Wishart blinked in a helpless, pathetic way; Baubie, who seemed to consider herself as associated with him alone in the charge, assumed an air of indifference and sucked her thumb, meantime watching Miss Mackenzie furtively. She felt puzzled to account for her presence there, but it never entered her head to connect that fact with herself in any way.

"Guilty or not guilty?" asked the sheriff-clerk.

"There's a kin' lady in coort," stammered Wishart, "an' she kens a' aboot it."

"Guilty or not guilty?" reiterated the clerk: "this is not the time to speak." "She kens it a', an' she wis to tak' the lassie."

"Guilty or not guilty? You must plead, and you can say what you like afterward." Wishart stopped, not without an appealing look at the kind lady, and pleaded guilty meekly. A policeman with a scratched face and one hand plastered up testified to the extravagances Mrs. Wishart had committed on the strength of her conversion to teetotal principles.

Baubic heard it all impassively, her face only betraying anything like keen interest while the police-officer was detailing his injuries. Three months' imprisonment was the sentence on Margaret Mactear or Wishart. Then Wishart's sentence was pronounced—sixty days.

He and Baubie drew nearer to each other, Wishart with a despairing, helpless look. Baubie's eyes looked like those of a hare taken in a gin. Not one word had been said about her. She was not to go with her father. What was to become of her? She was not long left in doubt as to her fate.

"I will take the child, sheriff," said Miss Mackenzie eagerly and anxiously. "I came here purposely to offer her a home in the refuge."

"Policeman, hand over the child to this lady at once," said the sheriff.—

"Nothing could be better, Miss Mackenzie. It is very good of you to volunteer to take charge of her."

Mrs. Wishart disappeared with a parting volley of blasphemy; her husband, casting, as he went, a wistful look at Miss Mackenzie, shambled fecklessly after the partner of his joys and sorrows; and the child remained alone behind. The policeman took her by an arm and drew her forward to make room for a fresh consignment of wickedness from the cells at the side. Baubie breathed a short sigh as the door closed upon her parents, shook back her hair, and looked up at Miss Mackenzie, as if to announce her readiness and good will. Not one vestige of her internal mental attitude could be gathered from her sun-and wind-beaten little countenance. There was no rebelliousness, neither was there guilt. One would almost have thought she had been told beforehand what was to happen, so cool and collected was she.

"Now, Baubie, I am going to take you home. Come, child."

Pleased with her success, Miss Mackenzie, so speaking, took the little waif's hand and led her out of the police-court into the High street. She hardly dared to conjecture that it was Baubie Wishart's first visit to that place, but as she stood on the entrance-steps and shook out her skirts with a sense of relief, she breathed a sincere hope that it might be the child's last.

A cab was waiting. Baubie, to her intense delight and no less astonishment, was requested to occupy the front seat. Miss Mackenzie gave the driver his order and got in, facing the red tartan bundle.

"Were you ever in a cab before?" asked Miss Mackenzie.

"Na, niver," replied Baubie in a rapt tone and without looking at her questioner, so intent was she on staring out of the windows, between both of which she divided her attention impartially.

They were driving down the Mound, and the outlook, usually so far-reaching from that vantage-ground, was bounded by a thick sea-fog that the east wind was carrying up from the Forth and dispensing with lavish hands on all sides. The buildings had a grim, black look, as if a premature old age had come upon them, and the black pinnacles of the Monument stood out sharply defined in clear-cut, harsh distinctness against the floating gray background. There were not many people stirring in the streets. It was a depressing atmosphere, and Miss Mackenzie observed before long that Baubie either seemed to have become influenced by it or that the novelty of the cab-ride had worn off completely. They crossed the Water of Leith, worn to a mere brown thread owing to the long drought, by Stockbridge street bridge, and a few yards from it found themselves before a gray stone house separated from the street by a grass-plot surrounded by a stone wall: inside the wall grew chestnut and poplar trees, which in summer must have shaded the place agreeably, but which this day, in the cold gray mist, seemed almost funereal in their gloomy blackness. The gate was opened from within the wall as soon as Miss Mackenzie rang, and she and Baubie walked up the little flagged path together. As the gate clanged to behind them Baubie looked back involuntarily and sighed.

"Don't fear, lassie," said her guide: "they will be very kind to you here. And it will be just a good home for you."

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. She glanced up as if to show that she understood, but her eyes turned then and rested on the square front of the little old-fashioned gray house with its six staring windows and its front circumscribed by the wall and the black poplars and naked chestnuts, and she choked down another sigh.

"Now, Mrs. Duncan," Miss Mackenzie was saying to a comfortably-dressed elderly woman, "here's your new girl, Baubie Wishart."

"Eh, ye've been successful then, Miss Mackenzie?"

"Oh dear, yes: the sheriff made no objection. And now, Mrs. Duncan, I hope she will be a good girl and give you no trouble.—Come here, Baubie, and promise me to do everything you are told and obey Mrs. Duncan in everything."

"Yes, mem," answered Bauble reverently, almost solemnly.

There seemed to be no necessity for further exhortation. Baubie's demeanor promised everything that was hoped for or wanted, and, perfectly contented, Miss Mackenzie turned her attention to the minor details of wardrobe, etc.: "That frock is good enough if it were washed. She must get shoes and stockings; and then underwear, too, of some sort will be wanted."

"That will it," responded the matron; "but I had better send her at once to get a bath."

A big girl was summoned from a back room and desired to get ready a tub. It was the ceremony customary at the reception of a neophyte—customary, and in general very necessary too.

Baubie's countenance fell lower still on hearing this, and she blinked both eyes deprecatingly. Nevertheless, when the big girl—whom they called Kate—returned, bringing with her a warm whiff of steam and soap, she trotted after her obediently and silently.

After a while the door opened, and Kate's yellow head appeared. "Speak with ye, mem?" she said. "I hae her washen noo, but what for claes?"

"Eh yes.—Miss Mackenzie, we can't put her back into those dirty clothes."

"Oh no.—I'll come and look at her clothes, Kate." As she spoke Miss Mackenzie rose and followed the matron and Kate into a sort of kitchen or laundry.

In the middle of the floor was a tub containing Miss Wishart mid-deep in soapsuds. Her thick hair was all soaking, and clung fast to her head: dripping locks hung clown over her eyes, which looked out through the tangle patient and suffering. She glanced up quickly as Miss Mackenzie came in, and then resigned herself passively into Kate's hands, who with a piece of flannel had resumed the scrubbing process.

Miss Mackenzie was thinking to herself that it was possibly Baubie Wishart's first experience of the kind, when she observed the child wince as if she were hurt.

"It's yon' as hurts her," said Kate, calling the matron's attention to something on the child's shoulders. They both stooped and saw a long blue-and-red mark—a bruise all across her back. Nor was this the only evidence of ill-treatment: other bruises, and even scars, were to be seen on the lean little body.

"Puir thing!" said the matron in a low tone, sympathizingly.

"Baubie, who gave you that bruise?" asked Miss Mackenzie.

No answer from Baubie, who seemed to be absorbed in watching the drops running off the end of her little red nose, which played the part of a gargoyle to the rest of her face.

Miss Mackenzie repeated the question, sternly almost: "Bauble Wishart, I insist upon knowing who gave you that bruise."

"A didna gie't to mysel', mem." was the answer from the figure in the soapsuds. There was a half sob in the voice as of terror, and her manner had all the appearance of ingenuousness.

The matron and Miss Mackenzie looked at each other significantly, and agreed tacitly that there was no use in pushing the question.

"Od!" said Kate, who had paused in the act of taking a warm towel from the fireplace to listen, "a'body kens ye didna gie it till yoursel', lassie."

"Where are her clothes?" said the matron. "Oh, here. Yon frock's good enough if it was washed; but, losh me! just look at these for clothes!" She was exhibiting some indescribable rags as she spoke.

"Kate," said Miss Mackenzie, "dress her in the lassie Grant's clothes: they are the most likely to fit her. Don't lose time: I want to see her again before I go."

Kate fished up her charge, all smoking, from the soapsuds and rubbed her down before the fire. Then the tangled wet hair was parted evenly and smoothed into dark locks on either side of her face. Raiment clean, but the coarsest of the coarse, was found for her. A brown wincey dress surmounted all. Shoes and stockings came last of all, probably in the order of importance assigned to them by Kate.

From the arm-chair of the matron's sitting-room Miss Mackenzie surveyed her charge with satisfaction. Baubie looked subdued, contented, perhaps grateful, and was decidedly uncomfortable. Every vestige of the picturesque was gone, obliterated clean by soap and water, and Kate's hair-comb, a broken-toothed weapon that had come off second best in its periodic conflicts with her own barley-mow, had disposed for ever of the wild, curly tangle of hair. Her eyes had red rims to them, caused by superfluous soap and water, and in its present barked condition, when all the dirt was gone, Baubie's face had rather an interesting, wistful expression. She seemed not to stand very steadily in her boots, which were much too big for her.

Miss Mackenzie surveyed her with great satisfaction. The brown wincey and the coarse apron seemed to her the neophyte's robe, betokening Baubie's conversion from arab nomadism to respectability and from a vagabond trade to decorous industry.

"Now, Baubie, you can knit: I mean to give you needles and worsted to knit yourself stockings. Won't that be nice? I am sure you never knitted stockings for yourself before."

"Yes, mem," replied Baubie, shuffling her feet.

"Now, what bed is she to get, Mrs. Duncan? Let us go up stairs and see the dormitory."

"I thought I would put her in the room with Kate: I changed the small bed in there. If you will just step up stairs, Miss Mackenzie?"

The party reached the dormitory by a narrow wooden staircase, the whiteness of which testified to the scrubbing powers of Kate's red arms and those of her compeers. All the windows were open, and the east wind came in at its will, nippingly cold if airy. They passed through a large, low-ceilinged room into a smaller one, in which were only four beds: a small iron stretcher beside the window was pointed out as Baubie's. Miss Mackenzie turned down the red-knitted coverlet and looked at the blankets. They were perfectly clean, like everything else, and, like everything else too, very coarse and very well worn.

"This will do very nicely.—Baubie, this is to be your bed."

Baubie, fresh from the lock-up and Kennedy's Lodgings, might have been expected to show some trace of her sense of comparison, but not a vestige of expression crossed her face: she looked up in civil acknowledgment of having heard: that was all.

"I shall look in again in the course of a week," announced Miss Mackenzie.—"Good-bye, Baubie: do everything Mrs. Duncan tells you."

With this valedictory Miss Mackenzie left the matron, and Kate attended her down stairs; and Baubie was at last alone.

She remained standing stock-still when they left her by the bedside—when the door, shut by Kate, who went out last, hid them from her view. She listened in a stupid kind of way to the feet tramping on the bare boards of the outer dormitory and down the stairs: then all was still, and Baubie Wishart, clean, clothed and separated from her father for the first time in her life, was left alone to consider how she liked "school." She felt cold and strange and lonely, and for about three minutes' space she abandoned herself without reserve to the sensation. Then the heavy shoes troubled her, and in a fit of anger and impatience she suddenly began to unlace one. Some far-off sound startled her, and with a furtive, timorous look at the door she fastened it up again. No one came, but instead of returning to the boot she sprang to the window, and, mounting the narrow sill, prepared to survey the domain that lay below it. There was not much to see. The window looked out on the back green, which was very much like the front, save that there was no flagged walk. A few stunted poplars ran round the walls: the grass was trodden nearly all off, and from wall to wall were stretched cords from which fluttered a motley collection of linen hung out to dry. There was no looking out of it. Baubie craned her adventurous small neck in all directions. One side of the back green was overlooked by a tenement-house; the other was guarded by the poplars and a low stone wall; at the bottom was a dilapidated outhouse. The sky overhead was all dull gray: a formless gray sea-mist hurried across it, driven by the east wind, which found time as well to fill, as it passed, all the fluttering garments on the line and swell them into ridiculous travesties of the bodies they belonged to, tossing them the while with high mockery into all manner of weird contortions.

Baubie looked at them curiously, and wondered to herself how much they would all pawn for—considerably more than three shillings no doubt. She established that fact to her own satisfaction ere long, although she was no great arithmetician, and she sighed as she built and demolished an air-castle in her own mind. Though there was but little attraction for her in the room, she was about to leave the window when her eye fell on a large black cat crouched on the wall, employed in surveillance of the linen or stalking sparrows or in deadly ambush for a hated rival. Meeting Baubie's glance, he sat up and stared at her suspiciously with a pair of round yellow, unwinking orbs.

"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. She repeated her invitation, whereon the cat slowly rose to his feet, humped his back and yawned, then deliberately turned quite round, facing the other way, and resumed his watchful attitude, his tail tucked in and his ears folded back close, as if to give the cold wind as little purchase as possible. Baubie felt snubbed and lonely, and drawing back from the window she sat down on the edge of her bed to wait events.

Accustomed as she was to excitement, the experiences of the last few days were of a nature to affect even stronger nerves than hers, and the unwonted bodily sensations caused by the bath and change of garments seemed to intensify her consciousness of novelty and restraint. There was another not very pleasant sensation too, of which she herself had not taken account, although it was present and made itself felt keenly enough. It was her strange sense of desolation and grief at the parting from her father. Baubie herself would have been greatly puzzled had any person designated her feelings by these names. There were many things in that philosophy of the gutter in which Baubie Wishart was steeped to the lips undreamt of by her. What she knew she knew thoroughly, but there was much with which most children, even of her age and class in life, are, it is to be hoped, familiar, of which Baubie Wishart was utterly ignorant. Her circumstances were different from theirs—fortunately for them; and amongst the poor, as with their betters, various conditions breed various dispositions. Baubie was an outer barbarian and savage in comparison with some children, although they perhaps went barefooted also; but, like a savage too, she would have grown fat where they would have starved. And this she knew well.

Kate's yellow head, appearing at the door to summon her to dinner, put an end to her gloomy reverie. And with this, her first meal, began Baubie's acquaintance with the household of which she was to form an integral portion from that hour.

They gave her no housework to do. Mrs. Duncan, whom a very cursory examination satisfied as to the benighted ignorance of this latest addition to her flock, determined that Baubie should learn to read, write and sew as expeditiously as might be. In order that she might benefit by example, she was made to sit by the lassie Grant, the child whose clothes had been lent to her, and her education began forthwith.

It was tame work to Baubie, who did not love sitting still: "white seam" was a vexation of spirit, and her knitting, in which she had beforehand believed herself an adept, was found fault with. The lassie Grant, as was pointed out to her, could knit more evenly and possessed a superior method of "turning the heel."

Baubie Wishart listened with outward calmness and seeming acquiescence to the comparison instituted between herself and her neighbor. Inwardly, however, she raged. What about knitting? Anybody could knit. She would like to see the lassie Grant earn two shillings of a Saturday night singing in the High street or the Lawnmarket. Baubie forgot in her flush of triumphant recollection that there had always been somebody to take the two shillings from her, and beat her and accuse her of malversation and embezzlement into the bargain. Artist-like, she remembered her triumphs only: she could earn two shillings by her braced of songs, and for a minute, as she revelled in this proud consciousness, her face lost its demure, watchful expression, and the old independent, confident bearing reappeared. 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.

The consequence of her being well fed was simply that her mind was freed from what is, after all, the besetting occupation of creatures like her, and was therefore at liberty to bestow its undivided attention upon the restraints and irksomeness of this new order of things. Her gypsy blood began to stir in her: the charm of her old vagabond habits asserted itself under the wincey frock and clean apron. To be commended for knitting and sewing was no distinction worth talking about. What was it compared with standing where the full glare of the blazing windows of some public-house fell upon the Rob Roy tartan, with an admiring audience gathered round and bawbees and commendations flying thick? She never thought then, any more than now, of the cold wind or the day-long hunger. It was no wonder that under the influence of these cherished recollections "white seam" did not progress and the knitting never attained to the finished evenness of the lassie Grant's performance.

None the less, although she made no honest effort to equal this model proposed for her example, did Baubie feel jealous and aggrieved. Her nature recognized other possibilities of expression and other fields of excellence beyond those afforded by the above-mentioned useful arts, and she brooded over her arbitrary and forcedly inferior position with all the intensity of a naturally masterful and passionate nature. It was all the more unbearable because she had no real cause of complaint: had she been oppressed or ill-treated in the slightest degree, or had anybody else been unduly favored, there would have been a pretext for an outbreak or a shadow of a reason for her discontent. But it was not so. The matron dispensed even-handed justice and motherly kindness impartially all round. And if the lassie Grant's excellences were somewhat obtrusively contrasted with Baubie's shortcomings, it was because, the two children being of the same age, Mrs. Duncan hoped to rouse thereby a spark of emulation in Baubie. Neither was there any pharisaical self-exaltation on the part of the rival. She was a sandy-haired little girl, an orphan who had been three years in the refuge, and who in her own mind rather deprecated as unfair any comparison drawn between herself and the newly-caught Baubie.

Day followed day quietly, and Baubie had been just a week in the refuge, when Miss Mackenzie, faithful to her promise, called to inquire how her protégée was getting on.

The matron gave her rather a good character of Baubie. "She's just no trouble—a quiet-like child. She knows just nothing, but I've set her beside the lassie Grant, and I don't doubt but she'll do well yet; but she is some dull," she added.

"Are you happy, Baubie?" asked Miss Mackenzie. "Will you try and learn everything like 'Lisbeth Grant? See how well she sews, and she is no older than you."

"Ay, mem," responded Baubie, meekly and without looking up. She was still wearing 'Lisbeth Grant's frock and apron, and the garments gave her that odd look of their real owner which clothes so often have the power of conveying. Baubie's slim figure had caught the flat-backed, square-shoulder form of her little neighbor, and her face, between the smooth-laid bands of her hair, seemed to have assumed the same gravely-respectable air. The disingenuous roving eye was there all the time, could they but have noted it, and gave the lie to her compressed lips and studied pose.

That same day the Rob Roy tartan frock made its appearance from the wash, brighter as to hue, but somewhat smaller and shrunken in size, as was the nature of its material for one reason, and for another because it had parted, in common with its owner when subjected to the same process, with a great deal of extraneous matter. Baubie saw her familiar garb again with joy, and put it on with keen satisfaction.

That same night, when the girls were going to bed—whether the inspiration still lingered, in spite of soapsuds, about the red frock, and was by it imparted to its owner, or whether it was merely the prompting of that demon of self-assertion that had been tormenting her of late—Baubie Wishart volunteered a song, and, heedless of consequences, struck up one of the two which formed her stock in trade.

The unfamiliar sounds had not long disturbed the quiet of the house when the matron and Kate, open-eyed with wonder, hastened up to know what was the meaning of this departure from the regular order of things. Baubie heard their approach, and only sang the louder. She had a good and by no means unmusical voice, which the rest had rather improved; and by the time the authorities arrived on the scene there was an audience gathered round the daring Baubie, who, with shoes and stockings off and the Rob Roy tartan half unfastened, was standing by her bed, singing at the pitch of her voice. The words could be heard down the stairs:

"Baubie Wishart," cried the astonished mistress, "what do you mean?"

The singer was just at the close of a verse:

She finished it off deliberately, and turned her bright eyes and flushed face toward the speaker.

"Who gave you leave, Baubie Wishart," went on the angry matron, "to make yon noise? You ought to think shame of such conduct, singing your good-for-nothing street-songs like a tinkler. One would think ye would feel glad never to hear of such things again. Let me have no more of this, do ye hear? I just wonder what Miss Mackenzie would say to ye!—Kate, stop here till they are all bedded and turn off yon gas."

Long before the gas was extinguished Baubie had retired into darkness beneath the bed-clothes, rage and mortification swelling her small heart. Good-for-nothing street-songs! Tinkler! Mrs. Duncan's scornful epithets rang in her ears and cut her to the quick. She lay awake, trembling with anger and indignation, until long after Kate had followed the younger fry to rest, and their regular breathing, which her ears listened for till they caught it from every bed, warned her that the weary occupants were safely asleep: then she sat up in bed. The moonlight was streaming into the room through the uncurtained window, and lit up her tumbled head and hot face. After a cautious pause she stepped out on the floor and went round the foot of her bed to the window. She knelt down on the floor, as if she were in search of something, and began feeling with her hand on the lower part of the shutter. Then, close to the floor, and in a place where they were likely to escape detection, she marked clearly and distinctly eight deep, short scratches in an even line on the yellow-painted woodwork. She ran her fingers over them until she could feel each scratch distinctly. Eight! She counted them thrice to make sure, then jumped back into bed, and in a few minutes was as fast asleep as her neighbors.

The days wore into weeks, and the weeks had soon made a month, and time, as it went, left Baubie more demure, quieter and more diligent—diligent apparently at least, for the knitting, though it advanced, showed no sign of corresponding improvement, and the rest of her work was simply scamped. March had given way to April, and the late Edinburgh spring at last began to give signs of its approach. The chestnuts showed brown glistening tips to their branch-ends, and their black trunks became covered with an emerald-colored mildew; the rod-like branches of the poplars turned a pale whitish-green and began to knot and swell; the Water of Leith overflowed, and ran bubbling and mud-colored under the bridge; and the grass by its banks, and even that in the front green of the refuge, showed here and there a red-eyed daisy. The days grew longer and longer, and of a mild evening the thrush's note was to be heard above the brawling of the stream from the thickets of Dean Terrace Gardens.

Baubie Wishart waited passively. Every day saw her more docile and demure, and every day saw a new scratch added to her tally on the window-shutter behind her bed.

May came, and the days climbed with longer strides to their goal, now close; on reaching which they return slowly and unwillingly, but just as surely; and to her joy, about, the third week in May, Baubie Wishart counted one warm, clear night fifty-nine scratches on the shutter. Fifty-nine! She knew the number well without counting them.

Whether she slept or watched that night is not known, but the next morning at four saw Baubie make a hasty and rather more simple toilette than usual, insomuch as she forgot to wash herself, brush her hair or put on her shoes and stockings. Barefooted and bareheaded, much as she had come, she went. She stole noiselessly as a shadow through the outer dormitory, passing the rows of sleepers with bated breath, and not without a parting glance of triumph at the bed where her rival, Elizabeth Grant, was curled up. Down the wooden stair, her bare feet waking no echoes, glided Baubie, and into the school-room, which looked out on the front green. She opened the window easily, hoisted herself on the sill, crept through and let herself drop on the grass below. To scramble up the trunk of one of the chestnuts and swing herself over the wall was quickly done, and then she was once more on the flagged path of the street, and the world lay before her.

As she stood for one moment, breathless with her haste and excitement, she was startled by the sudden apparition of the house cat, who was on his way home as surreptitiously as she was on hers abroad. He had one bloody ear and a scratched nose, and stared at her as he passed: then, probably in the hope of finding an open door after her, he jumped over the wall hurriedly. Baubie was seized with a sudden panic lest the cat should waken some one in the house, and she took to her heels and ran until she reached the bridge. The morning sun was just beginning to touch the tall tops of the houses, and the little valley through which the Water of Leith ran lay still in a kind of clear grayish light, in which the pale tender hues of the young leaves and the flowering trees were all the more vividly beautiful. The stream was low, and it hurried along over its stony bed, as if it too were running away, and in as great a hurry to be free of all restraints as truant Baubie Wishart, whose red frock was now climbing the hilly gray street beyond.

She could hear, as she strained herself to listen for pursuing voices, the rustle and murmur of the water with an odd distinctness as it rose upon the still air of the summer morning.

Not a creature was to be seen as she made her way eastward, shaping her course for Princes street, and peering, with a gruesome fear of the school-board officer, round every corner. That early bird, however, was not so keenly on the alert as she gave him the credit of being, and she reached her goal unchallenged after coasting along in parallel lines with it for some time.

The long beautiful line of Princes street was untenanted as the Rob Roy tartan tacked cautiously round the corner of St. David street and took a hasty look up and down before venturing forth.

The far-reaching pale red beams of the morning sun had just touched and kindled as with a flame the summit of the Rock, and the windows of the Castle caught and flashed back the greeting in a dozen ruddy reflections. The gardens below lay partly veiled in a clear transparent mist, faintly blue, that hovered above the trees and crept up the banks, and over which the grand outlines of the Rock towered as it lifted its head majestically into the gold halo that lay beyond.

Not a sound or stir, even the sparrows were barely awake, as Baubie darted along. Fixing her eye on that portion of the High School which is visible from Princes street, she pushed along at a pace that was almost a run, and a brief space saw her draw up and fall exhausted on the steps that lead up to the Calton Hill.

Right before her was the jail-gate.

The child's feet, unused now for some time to such hardships, were hot and bruised, for she had not stopped to pick her footing in her hasty course, and she was so out of breath and heated that it seemed to her as if she would never get cool or her heart cease fluttering as if it would choke her. She shrank discreetly against the stone wall at her side, and there for three long hours she remained crouched, watching and waiting for the hour to chime when the grim black gate opposite would open.

The last tinge of crimson and purple had faded before the golden glories of the day as the sun climbed higher and higher in the serene blue sky. The red cliffs of Salisbury Crags glared with a hot lustre above the green slopes of the hill, and in the white dust of the high-road a million tiny stars seemed to sparkle and twinkle most invitingly to Baubie's eyes. The birds had long been awake and busy in the bushes above her head, and from where she sat she could see, in the distant glitter of Princes street, all the stir of the newly-raised day.

It was a long vigil, and her fear and impatience made it seem doubly longer. At last the clock began to chime eight, and before it was half done the wicket in the great door opened with a noisy clang after a preliminary rattle.

First came a boy, who cast an anxious look round him, then set off at a run; next a young woman, for whom another was waiting just out of sight down the road; last of all (there were only three released), Baubie, whose heart was beginning to beat fast again with anxiety, saw the familiar, well-known figure shamble forth and look up and down the road in a helpless, undecided way. The next moment the wicket had clapped to again. Wishart glanced back at it, sighed once or twice, and blinked his eyes as though the sunlight were too strong for them.

Baubie, scarce breathing, watched him as a cat watches just before she springs.

After a second of hesitation he began to move cityward, obeying some sheep-like instinct which impelled him to follow those who had gone on before. Baubie saw this, and, just waiting to let him get well under way and settle into his gait, she gathered herself up and sprang across the road upon him with the suddenness and rapidity of a flash.

He fairly staggered with surprise. There she was, exactly as he had left her, dusty, barefooted and bareheaded. The wind had tossed up her hair, which indeed was only too obedient to its will, and it clustered all the more wildly about her face because of having been cropped to the regulation length of the refuge.

"Lassie, is't you?" he ejaculated, lost in astonishment. Then, realizing the fact, he gave expression to his feeling by grinning in a convulsive kind of way and clapping her once or twice on the shoulder next him. "Od! I niver! Didna the leddy—"

Baubie cut him short. "Sed I widna bide," she observed curtly and significantly.

Gestures and looks convey, among people like the Wisharts, far more meaning than words, and Baubie's father perfectly understood from the manner and tone of her pregnant remark that she had run away from school, and had severed the connection between herself and the "kind leddy," and that in consequence the situation was highly risky for both. They remained standing still for a moment, looking at each other. The boy and the woman were already out of sight, and the white, dusty high-road seemed all their own domain.

Wishart shuffled with his feet once more, and looked in the direction of Princes street, and then at Baubie inquiringly. It was for her, as usual, to decide. Baubie had been his Providence for as long as he had memory for—no great length of time. He was conjecturing in his own mind vaguely whether his Providence had, by any chance, got the desiderated three shillings necessary for the redemption of the banjo hidden away in the Rob Roy tartan. He would not have been surprised had it been so, and he would have asked no questions.

Seeing that her eyes followed the direction of his with a forbidding frown, he said tentatively, "Ye didn'—didna—"

"What?" snapped Baubie crossly: she divined his meaning exactly. "Come awa' wi' ye!" she ordered, facing right round countryward.

"We'll gae awa' til Glasgae, Baubie, eh? I'm thinkin' to yer auntie's. She"—with a gesture of his head backward at the prison—"will no' be oot this month; sae she'll niver need to ken, eh?"

Baubie nodded. He only spoke her own thoughts, and he knew it.

The first turn to the right past the High School brought them out on the road before Holyrood, which lay grim and black under the sun-bathed steeps of Arthur's Seat. On by the Grange and all round the south-eastern portion of the city this odd couple took their way. It was a long round, but safety made it necessary. At last, between Corstorphine's wooded slopes and the steeper rise of the Pentlands, they struck into the Glasgow road. In the same order as before they pursued their journey, Baubie leading as of old, now and again vouchsafing a word over her shoulder to her obedient follower, until the dim haze of the horizon received into itself the two quaint figures, and Baubie Wishart and the Rob Roy tartan faded together out of sight.

The Author of "Flitters, Tatters and the Counsellor."