’Jean was very busy, sir. The whole house is upset since four this morning,’ Alison answered, quietly. ’Your cousin could not leave her child to come herself.’ ’My cousin "leaves her child" on other occasions fast enough,’ said Herries, with a sneer. ’This crisis in the boy’s health,’ he went on, sternly, ’comes of her own neglect. ’Tis weeks since I warned her that she should call in a physician, and I gave her an introduction to Mr. Ross. However, since you are good enough to be her messenger, tell her that I will bring or send the man in the course of the day. It is no sinecure, I think you must perceive, Miss Graham, to be the self-appointed guardian of another man’s children.’ He spoke with great bitterness, and Alison could not but feel that he was justified. Her message was delivered, and she could but go. So deep was Herries’s annoyed preoccupation, that he barely bowed as he held the door open for her exit. He sat down moodily to his desk again when she was gone. But presently, though some little interval of time had elapsed, his sharp ears caught the sound of her voice, downstairs it seemed. What delayed her? he wondered, irritably; and supposed he must descend and see. What he did see, as he came downstairs into the hall, was the spectacle of his partner, Creighton, bare-headed in the rain, helping Miss Graham into a coach, while a clerk, who had apparently just fetched it, held open the door. Herries felt himself redden to the very forehead with a boyish shame. The coach rolled off, and Creighton came in, shaking the rain from his coat. ’My good sir,’ said Herries, meeting him, ’our noble profession of the law is making a Diogenes of me, and I seem to have forgotten the manners of a gentleman. But you make up for my deficiencies.’ ’Nay, nay,’ said Creighton, in confusion, ’I but saw the child trying to open the door against the blatter, and I could not let her walk forth into the rain. That was all. I hear she brings ill news.’ ’Ill enough,’ said Herries. ’But what special sort of churl was I to confound her with her news? A good girl, doing far more than her duty by me and mine.’ ’Ay, a fine lass, a very fine lass,’ said Creighton, looking earnestly at the younger man. ’And yet, like the rest of them,’ said Herries, musingly. ’She comes to a man’s house as to a shop, for something useful—all ’tis good for.’ ’Nay, now,’ said Creighton, smiling, ’we know who it is teaches her _that_ trick here. ’Tis not of her own doing, or on her own trokes. Be just, sir.’ And so it was that Alison’s elderly conquest in George Street took up the cudgels on her behalf and never dropped them again as long as he had strength to hold them. *CHAPTER XXI.*