"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?"
"Yes, Grandma! I wrote and said I was coming," replied Mary.
"Is he goin' to let you bide here?" croaked the other. "Maybe he'll put ye out again. When was that? Was it before Marg'et deed? I canna think. Your hair looks unco' bonnie that way." Her gaze then faded and she seemed to lose interest, murmuring disconsolately as she turned towards the fire, "I canna eat so weel without my teeth."
"Would you like a hot pancake and butter?" asked Mary in a coaxing tone.
"Would I no'!" replied the other instantly. "Where is't?"
Mary gave the old woman her pancake, saw her seize it avidly and, crouch ing over the fire, begin eagerly to suck it to its destruction. Suddenly she was aroused from her contemplation by a whisper in her ear:
"Please, I would like one too, Mary dear!" Nessie had come in and was now presenting a flatly suppliant palm, waiting to have it covered by the warm solace of a new-made pancake.
"You'll not have one; you'll have two," cried Mary recklessly. "Yes! As many as you like. I've made plenty."
"They're good," exclaimed Nessie appreciatively. "Good as good! You've made them so quick too; and my word, what a change you've made in the room! It's like old times again! As light as a feather! That's the way my mother used to make them, and these are just as good, ay, better than we used to get. Yum yum they're lovely!"
As Mary listened whilst Nessie talked on in this fashion and watched her quick, nervous gestures as she ate, she began to study her more intently than she had hitherto done, and slowly an impression of vague but deep uneasiness stole in upon her. The facile, running speech of her sister, the jerky and slightly uncontrolled movements perceptible now on her closer observation, seemed to betoken a state of unconscious nervous tension which alarmed her, and as she traced the thin contours of the other's growing body and noted her faintly hollowed cheeks and temples she said involuntarily:
"Nessie dear, are you sure you're feeling all right?"
Nessie stuffed the last of the pancake into her mouth before she replied expressively:
"I'm getting better and better especially since I've had that. Mary's pancakes are good but Mary herself is better." She chewed for a moment then solemnly added, "I've felt real bad once or twice, but I'm right as the mail now."
Her sudden idea was, of course, mere nonsense, thought Mary, but nevertheless she determined to use every effort in her power to obtain for Nessie some respite from the studies which seemed, at last, to be overtaxing the inadequate strength of her immature frame. A strong feeling, partly from love of her sister, but chieflv from a strong maternal impulse towards the other's weakness, gripped her, and she laid her arm protectingly round Nessie's narrow shoulders,
drew her close and murmured warmly, "I'll do my best for you, dear. I really will. There's nothing I wouldn't do to see you look happy and well."