And, strange it is to say it, but though he was in many ways a difficult man to serve, yet many a servant had remained another term, simply because the master slipped out to take his smoke away from every one in the evening. This is the whole idyll of the life of Bailie Holden, Convener of the Committee on Cleaning and Lighting and proximate Lord Provost of the city. It is curious that it should be an idyll of Bogie roll. ADVENTURE XXII. THE SEDUCTION OF A BAILIE. So it was at this most favourable of times that Cleaver's boy's kitchen-maid approached her master with her request. It was just at the critical moment when the Bailie was laying aside the Convener and host, and donning the Morrison Street plumber, with the garden coat which carried so strong an atmosphere of the idyllic Bogie roll. "If ye please, sir, there's a young man——," the voice of the kitchen-maid broke upon his dreams. "Ah, Janet," said the Convener, getting helped into the garden coat, for he was not now so slim as once he had been, "there always is a young man! And that's how the world goes on!" "But," said Janet, the kitchen-maid, "this is a very nice young man. You may have seen him, sir. He comes here twice every day from Mr. Cleaver's, the butcher's, sir." "No, Janet," replied the Bailie, amicably, "I do not know that I have observed him. You see, my duties do not compel me to be cleaning the kitchen steps when nice young men come from Cleaver's!" "Sir," said Janet, with a little privileged indignation, "James Annan, sir, is a most respectable young man." "And he asked you to speak to me?" "Oh no, sir! Indeed, no, sir! But I thought, sir, that in your department you might have need of a steady young man." "I have, indeed, Janet. You are as right as ever you will be in your life," said the Convener of Cleaning and Lighting, thinking of the ravages which the traditional hospitality of the department sometimes made among his steadiest young men. "What are his desires, Janet?" said the Bailie; "does he want a chief inspectorship, or will he be content to handle a broom?" "Oh, not an inspectorship—at first, sir. And he can handle anything, indeed, sir," said Janet, breathlessly, for the Convener had endued himself with his coat and showed signs of moving gardenwards. "Including your chin, my dear," said the Bailie, touching (it is very regrettable to have to state) one of Janet's plump dimples with the action which used fifty years ago to go by the name of "chucking." He had dined, his wife was safely up stairs out of harm's way, and Bogie roll glowed cloudily before him. Let these be his excuses. "James Annan, nor no one else, has more to do with my chin than I like to let them, sir," said Janet, who came from Inverness, and had a very clear idea of business. The Bailie laughed and went out. "I will bear it in mind, Janet," said he, for he felt that he was wasting time. He did not mean Janet's dimpled chin.