’My chest has been troublesome lately,’ answered the elder man. ’These north winds flay me alive. You have been out—it is good to be young!’ ’Oh, ay!’ said Herries, discontentedly. ’I have been out with my cousin’s children—plague take them! Did I tell you that the annuities hitherto paid to Mrs. Maclehose by the Writers’ and Surgeons’ Benevolent Societies are stopped? I had trouble enough getting them for her, five years since, when Maclehose left her. Now that ’tis known he is making an income in Jamaica, naturally such charitable support is withdrawn.’ ’Ay, to be sure,’ said Creighton, quietly. ’I am writing to that damned scoundrel Maclehose,’ Herries went on, ’to say I will not pay another penny for his wife and family. Yet there are the school fees due for the boy Willy, and I must give the lie to my words to-morrow.’ ’Well, well,’ said Creighton, ’the laddie must have his schooling, sure enough.’ ’I’ll be cursed if I can see why I should pay for it, though!’ said Herries, angrily. Perhaps there were few things that exasperated him more than his partner’s attitude in regard to the affairs of Mrs. Maclehose, as they concerned her cousin. Here was a man, Herries reflected, who, of all men, should have resented the intolerable and altogether unbusiness-like nature of an arrangement which made one man responsible for the support of the wife and family of another, and that other, one who was earning a substantial annual income in a foreign country. Agnes Maclehose was, indeed, cousin-germain to Archibald Herries—the daughter of his mother’s sister—and his sole living relative. On her quarrel with a worthless husband, he had considered himself to play but a kinsman’s and a lawyer’s part in arranging for her the details of a separation; and when, with two young children on her hands, and friendless, she had come to Edinburgh, he had done his best to ameliorate for her the hardness of her situation. He had taken in hand her money matters: she had a small income derived from money left her by her father, but it fell far short of the modest necessities of even a little household in the Potterrow. Out of his own pocket, Herries supplemented its deficiencies, and it was not the money he grudged, but the violation of a principle that he resented. And here was Creighton—a lawyer, a man of sense and of extraordinary shrewdness—who, instead of sympathising with his resentment, would for ever try to soothe it with ridiculous excuses.