"The temperature being one hundred and four, forbye some points up which I canna mind exactly, I'm douting she's for the pewmonia, and twa in the next hoose abune lying deed of the same," the stout woman mentioned, with a certain gloomy satisfaction that puzzled Joey. "And says I to Maggie M'Tulloch, 'I'll take the young leddy,' says I, 'and what o'wer chances _she'll_ not tak' the infection awa' wi' her.'" "Thank you; that's awfully kind," Joey said politely, though mournfully. She explained to Mrs. Tresham, who looked somewhat mystified by the flood of broad Scotch. "You poor child, I should like to take you with me to my hotel for to-night, but I suppose I hardly could, as I am staying with a friend there. But I don't like this for you. Have you authority from Miss Craigie?" she asked suddenly, turning to Maggie M'Tulloch's "own cousin" as though she rather hoped for a negative answer. But there was no escape. Maggie M'Tulloch's kinswoman dived promptly into a black knitted bag that she carried and produced a sheet of paper, scrawled in pencil: "I am so sorry, but I may not see you, Joey. Mrs. Nicol will take care of you, and put you into your train to-morrow. Good luck. "JEAN CRAIGIE." There was no help for it. Joey shook hands with kind Mrs. Tresham and thanked her, and walked off beside Mrs. Nicol in the wake of a huge outside porter, who wheeled her trunk on a barrow. They came up into the width and glare of Princes Street, crossed it, turned up a narrower street running at right angles to it, went half-way down, still following the porter, and turned into another narrower still, where narrow "wynds" or thread-like passages showed between the immensely tall old houses. In this street Mrs. Nicol stopped at last, produced a latch-key, and opened the door into a hall made dimly visible by a glimmer only of gas. "Ye'll be pleased to mount, miss," she said unsmilingly. Joey mounted four flights of stairs, all covered with slippery linoleum, till she landed at last in a room which looked as though no one could ever have laughed in it from the time the house was built. Four wooden waiting-room chairs stood against the mustard-coloured walls; a square table covered with a mottled brown cloth stood exactly in the centre. A cheap, crudely coloured print of "The last sleep of Argyle" above the chimney-piece was the sole attempt at ornament, unless one counted the dim cruets which occupied, for the want of a side-board, the centre of the dingy and once white-painted mantelpiece. The room was at once cold and stuffy.