"Is it ever given?" asked Andrew cautiously.

"Oh, I know it's given," interposed Mrs. Ramornie decisively. "George's uncle drank it up to five minutes before he died."

George's uncle had been a very bad example. At the same time he had been a baronet, and Andrew swithered between the dissoluteness of the request and a certain stylishness it undoubtedly possessed.

"Mr. Walkingshaw is very determined for it," said the nurse.

"Very well," he answered. "I'll get it for you."

He went out with her and then returned to his sisters.

"Does it mean the end is near?" asked Mrs. Donaldson in a very hushed voice.

"It means it's nearer," he answered grimly.

Undoubtedly this was a wild end for one of the most respectable lives ever lived in Edinburgh. Outside, the gale was now positively shrieking; and inside, he presumed the cork was already popping.

"What a pity!" said Gertrude.

"Oh, I don't know about that," replied her sister. "It keeps them happy.

George's uncle tried to sing after they thought all was over."

Her brother frowned. The possibility that the head of Walkingshaw & Gilliflower might exit singing exceeded his gloomiest forebodings. He wished women did not have that habit of talking about unpleasant things.

Could they not keep the like of that to themselves?

Even as he frowned the second tap disturbed them.

"What is it now?" he snapped.

"Could you tell me," asked the nurse, "where Mr. Walkingshaw keeps his cigars?"

"Cigars!" he cried.

"He is very set upon one."

Andrew silently opened a cupboard and handed her a box of cigars. Then, still in silence, he seated himself before the fire and frowned at the dancing flames. Behind his back his sisters talked in low voices, but he seemed to have no taste for further conversation.

A few minutes later came the third tap, and this time there was so curious a look in the nurse's face that the junior partner was on his feet in an instant.

"Is it--shall we come up?" he exclaimed.

"Mr. Walkingshaw would like to know what there's to be for dinner," said the nurse.

He looked at his sisters and they at him, and then he rang the bell.

n.o.body spoke till the butler came up.

"Will you ask the cook what's for dinner? Mr. Walkingshaw wants to know."

Andrew threw into this speech all the concentrated bitterness of his soul. Here was the quintessence of unorthodoxy in the very home of Walkingshaw & Gilliflower! The head of the firm proposed to die not merely drinking and smoking, but, if possible, feasting. They might be in some wretched Bohemian den.

In a few minutes the butler returned with a menu. Andrew read it with a sardonic smile.

"Tell him," he said, "that he can have c.o.c.ky-leeky soup, boiled cod and oyster sauce, loin of mutton, apple charlotte, and cheese straws--any or all of them he likes."

"Thank you," said the nurse.

Andrew planted himself before the fire.

"A fine story this is to get about!" he exclaimed darkly.

"But surely father must be light-headed," said Mrs. Ramornie.

"Umph," he replied.

He clearly did not consider this a very creditable excuse.

"Or perhaps he is really feeling better," suggested Gertrude.

"Better! A man at death's door one minute--given up by the doctors--and wanting to eat his dinner the next!"

He started.

"I wonder's that nurse fooling us! I didn't like the look of the woman from the moment she came into the house. I don't believe in your good-looking nurses."

On this point his sisters cordially agreed with him. Still they didn't believe it was the nurse.

"Then what is it?" he demanded. "If he's light-headed, why does she pay any attention to him?"

The door opened, this time without a tap, and in petrified silence they beheld the portly form of Heriot Walkingshaw, arrayed in a yellow dressing-gown, holding between his fingers a cigar, and smiling upon them with a curious blend of satisfaction and meekness.

"I have recovered," said he.

As he made this simple announcement he blew luxuriously through his nose two thin streams of smoke, while the meekness of his aspect seemed to make some conscious effort to keep on terms with the satisfaction.

A duet of questions and exclamations arose from the two ladies, and again some conscious restraint appeared to underlie the paternal calm with which he answered them.

"Yes," said he, "it is probably one of the most extraordinary recoveries on record. It began all of a sudden. The spasms pa.s.sed completely away, my temperature fell to normal, and I felt a curious sensation almost of exhilaration. It grew stronger and stronger till at last I could keep in bed no longer. I felt livelier than I have for years."

He pa.s.sed the cigar under his nose, drew in his breath, and smiled at it with a kind of partially chastened affection.

"Do you think could we not have dinner put on a little earlier, eh?"

A cry from the open door startled them. The sympathetic widow, her black eyes dilated, was gazing at the patient.

"Heriot!" she exclaimed, and there was a note in her voice that came very near to damping the junior partner's enthusiasm at finding the head of his firm restored to him.

"Yes, Madge," said Mr. Walkingshaw, his beatific smile still blander, "I have indeed been spared."

He drew another deep whiff from his cigar, and added gently--