When Herries had made some headway with his morning’s work, lost his temper with his clerk, and otherwise expressed his consciousness of the untowardness of things in general, he made the pleasing discovery, that a moral earthquake was heaving in the domestic department of his house. His room was ill-swept, his fire ill-tended; he summoned Lizzie, who appeared in even more than her usual condition of dishevelment, and telling her to send Mysie with some wood, was met with the baffling information: ’There’s nae Mysie here!’ delivered with a war-like snort. ’No Mysie!’ exclaimed Herries. ’Why, what’s come to the girl?’ ’There’s that come to her,’ said Lizzie, succinctly, ’that it ill becomes a decent body to hae the tellin’ o’....’ ’What!’ said Herries, repressing a strong inclination to laugh. ’Has the poor wench gone wrong?’ The ferocity of Lizzie’s expression was answer enough. ’So homely looks are no safeguard after all, Lizzie?’ said Herries, when he had been enlightened. ’And all your trouble in choosing a discreet helpmate was thrown away!’ He could not help tormenting his dependent, whose temper afforded him amusement at times, as well as inconvenience. ’How and when did you get rid of the girl?’ he enquired. ’Rid o’ her—the dirty besom!’ said Lizzie, reverting to the idiom of the fray. ’I put her to the door, and to the street—and her skirling like a scraggit hen! I’se warrant ye, I got rid o’ her!’ ’Well, I hope you gave her her wages up to date,’ said Herries, turning away, ’and did not put the poor wretch penniless on the pavement, in her condition, and in this weather.’ ’Oo, she had siller, I’m thinking,’ said the old woman, with a sly look; ’there was a croon i’ the pocket o’ her—and ane no’ honestly come by, neither.’ ’Bless me!’ said Herries, ’you paint your relative very black, Lizzie! Did she steal the crown?’ ’Na,’ said Lizzie, with unpleasant meaning in her tone; she had a tongue that would always hurt someone, if it could,—’she got given the croon right enough! ’Twas frae that braw leddy i’ the red coat ye had to her tea here; she wad hae Mysie haud her tongue aboot some cantrip o’ her ane, up the toon there, leaving a letter, or sic-like trash; but Mysie, ye ken, was simple, and aye blabbed everything she saw. O, they’re a’ the same, gentle and simple,’ added Lizzie, who hated her own sex with inexplicable malice. ’You may go,’ said Herries, curtly. He felt as though he had got a slap across the face—and from a dirty hand.