Jenny made use of Johnnie Fuggie and employed him in her aim. Her motive here was twofold. Johnnie was a person interested in Peggy’s kindred making their own out of Peggy, since she had become a powerful woman with favours in her right hand. It was better for all concerned that there should be a safe understanding rather than a dangerous feud between the rival claimants for young Mrs. Ramsay’s bounties. In other respects Johnnie himself was a despicable object to Jenny--a crouse, clavering carle, up in years, with a silly wife and family keeping him down. But Johnnie’s relations were not all detrimentals. He had a spruce, pushing nephew, who had risen to be a commercial traveller for ‘a big Edinburgh house in the drapery line.’ This nephew was considerably younger than Jenny, therefore flattered by her notice, while the disparity in years did not prevent her from making sheep’s eyes at him. The double inducement caused Jenny to be particularly attentive to Johnnie Fuggie, who was even more taken in by her graciousness than his nephew had yet proved himself. If the innocent man had known it, she wished that Johnnie should be art and part in her manœuvres and aggressions. Her clever tactics were to compromise everybody all round, and when each person was deeply involved, to rule the roast, and play her own winning game by means of her accomplices. One afternoon, in the end of April, when the weather was unusually warm for a Scotch spring, so that the gooseberry bushes were covered with their pale green blossom, and there was a fine sprinkling of red and lilac ‘spinks’ (polyanthuses) and white daisies already brightening the garden borders, Jenny come coolly into the dining-room at Drumsheugh, followed slowly by Johnnie Fuggie in his corduroys, velveteen jacket, and woollen comforter, which he wore summer and winter. Johnnie had the grace to pause, glance ruefully at his earth-laden feet, and even execute half a scrape of a bow on the threshold. He was a small, rickety-looking man, with a slight halt in his gait--more perceptible in his fatigue. He was not wont to be troubled with scruples, still he hung back a little.