"I thought I would put her in the room with Kate: I changed the small bed in there. If you will just step up stairs, Miss Mackenzie?"

The party reached the dormitory by a narrow wooden staircase, the whiteness of which testified to the scrubbing powers of Kate's red arms and those of her compeers. All the windows were open, and the east wind came in at its will, nippingly cold if airy. They passed through a large, low-ceilinged room into a smaller one, in which were only four beds: a small iron stretcher beside the window was pointed out as Baubie's. Miss Mackenzie turned down the red-knitted coverlet and looked at the blankets. They were perfectly clean, like everything else, and, like everything else too, very coarse and very well worn.

"This will do very nicely.—Baubie, this is to be your bed."

Baubie, fresh from the lock-up and Kennedy's Lodgings, might have been expected to show some trace of her sense of comparison, but not a vestige of expression crossed her face: she looked up in civil acknowledgment of having heard: that was all.

"I shall look in again in the course of a week," announced Miss Mackenzie.—"Good-bye, Baubie: do everything Mrs. Duncan tells you."

With this valedictory Miss Mackenzie left the matron, and Kate attended her down stairs; and Baubie was at last alone.

She remained standing stock-still when they left her by the bedside—when the door, shut by Kate, who went out last, hid them from her view. She listened in a stupid kind of way to the feet tramping on the bare boards of the outer dormitory and down the stairs: then all was still, and Baubie Wishart, clean, clothed and separated from her father for the first time in her life, was left alone to consider how she liked "school." She felt cold and strange and lonely, and for about three minutes' space she abandoned herself without reserve to the sensation. Then the heavy shoes troubled her, and in a fit of anger and impatience she suddenly began to unlace one. Some far-off sound startled her, and with a furtive, timorous look at the door she fastened it up again. No one came, but instead of returning to the boot she sprang to the window, and, mounting the narrow sill, prepared to survey the domain that lay below it. There was not much to see. The window looked out on the back green, which was very much like the front, save that there was no flagged walk. A few stunted poplars ran round the walls: the grass was trodden nearly all off, and from wall to wall were stretched cords from which fluttered a motley collection of linen hung out to dry. There was no looking out of it. Baubie craned her adventurous small neck in all directions. One side of the back green was overlooked by a tenement-house; the other was guarded by the poplars and a low stone wall; at the bottom was a dilapidated outhouse. The sky overhead was all dull gray: a formless gray sea-mist hurried across it, driven by the east wind, which found time as well to fill, as it passed, all the fluttering garments on the line and swell them into ridiculous travesties of the bodies they belonged to, tossing them the while with high mockery into all manner of weird contortions.

Baubie looked at them curiously, and wondered to herself how much they would all pawn for—considerably more than three shillings no doubt. She established that fact to her own satisfaction ere long, although she was no great arithmetician, and she sighed as she built and demolished an air-castle in her own mind. Though there was but little attraction for her in the room, she was about to leave the window when her eye fell on a large black cat crouched on the wall, employed in surveillance of the linen or stalking sparrows or in deadly ambush for a hated rival. Meeting Baubie's glance, he sat up and stared at her suspiciously with a pair of round yellow, unwinking orbs.

"Ki! ki! ki!" breathed Baubie discreetly. She felt lonely, and the cat looked a comfortable big creature, and belonged to the house doubtless, for he stared at her with an interested, questioning look. Presently he moved. She repeated her invitation, whereon the cat slowly rose to his feet, humped his back and yawned, then deliberately turned quite round, facing the other way, and resumed his watchful attitude, his tail tucked in and his ears folded back close, as if to give the cold wind as little purchase as possible. Baubie felt snubbed and lonely, and drawing back from the window she sat down on the edge of her bed to wait events.

Accustomed as she was to excitement, the experiences of the last few days were of a nature to affect even stronger nerves than hers, and the unwonted bodily sensations caused by the bath and change of garments seemed to intensify her consciousness of novelty and restraint. There was another not very pleasant sensation too, of which she herself had not taken account, although it was present and made itself felt keenly enough. It was her strange sense of desolation and grief at the parting from her father. Baubie herself would have been greatly puzzled had any person designated her feelings by these names. There were many things in that philosophy of the gutter in which Baubie Wishart was steeped to the lips undreamt of by her. What she knew she knew thoroughly, but there was much with which most children, even of her age and class in life, are, it is to be hoped, familiar, of which Baubie Wishart was utterly ignorant. Her circumstances were different from theirs—fortunately for them; and amongst the poor, as with their betters, various conditions breed various dispositions. Baubie was an outer barbarian and savage in comparison with some children, although they perhaps went barefooted also; but, like a savage too, she would have grown fat where they would have starved. And this she knew well.

Kate's yellow head, appearing at the door to summon her to dinner, put an end to her gloomy reverie. And with this, her first meal, began Baubie's acquaintance with the household of which she was to form an integral portion from that hour.

They gave her no housework to do. Mrs. Duncan, whom a very cursory examination satisfied as to the benighted ignorance of this latest addition to her flock, determined that Baubie should learn to read, write and sew as expeditiously as might be. In order that she might benefit by example, she was made to sit by the lassie Grant, the child whose clothes had been lent to her, and her education began forthwith.

It was tame work to Baubie, who did not love sitting still: "white seam" was a vexation of spirit, and her knitting, in which she had beforehand believed herself an adept, was found fault with. The lassie Grant, as was pointed out to her, could knit more evenly and possessed a superior method of "turning the heel."

Baubie Wishart listened with outward calmness and seeming acquiescence to the comparison instituted between herself and her neighbor. Inwardly, however, she raged. What about knitting? Anybody could knit. She would like to see the lassie Grant earn two shillings of a Saturday night singing in the High street or the Lawnmarket. Baubie forgot in her flush of triumphant recollection that there had always been somebody to take the two shillings from her, and beat her and accuse her of malversation and embezzlement into the bargain. Artist-like, she remembered her triumphs only: she could earn two shillings by her braced of songs, and for a minute, as she revelled in this proud consciousness, her face lost its demure, watchful expression, and the old independent, confident bearing reappeared. Baubie forgot also in her present well-nourished condition the never-failing sensation of hunger that had gone hand in hand with these departed glories. But even if she had remembered every circumstance of her former life, and the privations and sufferings, she would still have pined for its freedom.

The consequence of her being well fed was simply that her mind was freed from what is, after all, the besetting occupation of creatures like her, and was therefore at liberty to bestow its undivided attention upon the restraints and irksomeness of this new order of things. Her gypsy blood began to stir in her: the charm of her old vagabond habits asserted itself under the wincey frock and clean apron. To be commended for knitting and sewing was no distinction worth talking about. What was it compared with standing where the full glare of the blazing windows of some public-house fell upon the Rob Roy tartan, with an admiring audience gathered round and bawbees and commendations flying thick? She never thought then, any more than now, of the cold wind or the day-long hunger. It was no wonder that under the influence of these cherished recollections "white seam" did not progress and the knitting never attained to the finished evenness of the lassie Grant's performance.

None the less, although she made no honest effort to equal this model proposed for her example, did Baubie feel jealous and aggrieved. Her nature recognized other possibilities of expression and other fields of excellence beyond those afforded by the above-mentioned useful arts, and she brooded over her arbitrary and forcedly inferior position with all the intensity of a naturally masterful and passionate nature. It was all the more unbearable because she had no real cause of complaint: had she been oppressed or ill-treated in the slightest degree, or had anybody else been unduly favored, there would have been a pretext for an outbreak or a shadow of a reason for her discontent. But it was not so. The matron dispensed even-handed justice and motherly kindness impartially all round. And if the lassie Grant's excellences were somewhat obtrusively contrasted with Baubie's shortcomings, it was because, the two children being of the same age, Mrs. Duncan hoped to rouse thereby a spark of emulation in Baubie. Neither was there any pharisaical self-exaltation on the part of the rival. She was a sandy-haired little girl, an orphan who had been three years in the refuge, and who in her own mind rather deprecated as unfair any comparison drawn between herself and the newly-caught Baubie.

Day followed day quietly, and Baubie had been just a week in the refuge, when Miss Mackenzie, faithful to her promise, called to inquire how her protégée was getting on.

The matron gave her rather a good character of Baubie. "She's just no trouble—a quiet-like child. She knows just nothing, but I've set her beside the lassie Grant, and I don't doubt but she'll do well yet; but she is some dull," she added.

"Are you happy, Baubie?" asked Miss Mackenzie. "Will you try and learn everything like 'Lisbeth Grant? See how well she sews, and she is no older than you."

"Ay, mem," responded Baubie, meekly and without looking up. She was still wearing 'Lisbeth Grant's frock and apron, and the garments gave her that odd look of their real owner which clothes so often have the power of conveying. Baubie's slim figure had caught the flat-backed, square-shoulder form of her little neighbor, and her face, between the smooth-laid bands of her hair, seemed to have assumed the same gravely-respectable air. The disingenuous roving eye was there all the time, could they but have noted it, and gave the lie to her compressed lips and studied pose.

That same day the Rob Roy tartan frock made its appearance from the wash, brighter as to hue, but somewhat smaller and shrunken in size, as was the nature of its material for one reason, and for another because it had parted, in common with its owner when subjected to the same process, with a great deal of extraneous matter. Baubie saw her familiar garb again with joy, and put it on with keen satisfaction.

That same night, when the girls were going to bed—whether the inspiration still lingered, in spite of soapsuds, about the red frock, and was by it imparted to its owner, or whether it was merely the prompting of that demon of self-assertion that had been tormenting her of late—Baubie Wishart volunteered a song, and, heedless of consequences, struck up one of the two which formed her stock in trade.

The unfamiliar sounds had not long disturbed the quiet of the house when the matron and Kate, open-eyed with wonder, hastened up to know what was the meaning of this departure from the regular order of things. Baubie heard their approach, and only sang the louder. She had a good and by no means unmusical voice, which the rest had rather improved; and by the time the authorities arrived on the scene there was an audience gathered round the daring Baubie, who, with shoes and stockings off and the Rob Roy tartan half unfastened, was standing by her bed, singing at the pitch of her voice. The words could be heard down the stairs:

"Baubie Wishart," cried the astonished mistress, "what do you mean?"

The singer was just at the close of a verse:

She finished it off deliberately, and turned her bright eyes and flushed face toward the speaker.

"Who gave you leave, Baubie Wishart," went on the angry matron, "to make yon noise? You ought to think shame of such conduct, singing your good-for-nothing street-songs like a tinkler. One would think ye would feel glad never to hear of such things again. Let me have no more of this, do ye hear? I just wonder what Miss Mackenzie would say to ye!—Kate, stop here till they are all bedded and turn off yon gas."

Long before the gas was extinguished Baubie had retired into darkness beneath the bed-clothes, rage and mortification swelling her small heart. Good-for-nothing street-songs! Tinkler! Mrs. Duncan's scornful epithets rang in her ears and cut her to the quick. She lay awake, trembling with anger and indignation, until long after Kate had followed the younger fry to rest, and their regular breathing, which her ears listened for till they caught it from every bed, warned her that the weary occupants were safely asleep: then she sat up in bed. The moonlight was streaming into the room through the uncurtained window, and lit up her tumbled head and hot face. After a cautious pause she stepped out on the floor and went round the foot of her bed to the window. She knelt down on the floor, as if she were in search of something, and began feeling with her hand on the lower part of the shutter. Then, close to the floor, and in a place where they were likely to escape detection, she marked clearly and distinctly eight deep, short scratches in an even line on the yellow-painted woodwork. She ran her fingers over them until she could feel each scratch distinctly. Eight! She counted them thrice to make sure, then jumped back into bed, and in a few minutes was as fast asleep as her neighbors.

The days wore into weeks, and the weeks had soon made a month, and time, as it went, left Baubie more demure, quieter and more diligent—diligent apparently at least, for the knitting, though it advanced, showed no sign of corresponding improvement, and the rest of her work was simply scamped. March had given way to April, and the late Edinburgh spring at last began to give signs of its approach. The chestnuts showed brown glistening tips to their branch-ends, and their black trunks became covered with an emerald-colored mildew; the rod-like branches of the poplars turned a pale whitish-green and began to knot and swell; the Water of Leith overflowed, and ran bubbling and mud-colored under the bridge; and the grass by its banks, and even that in the front green of the refuge, showed here and there a red-eyed daisy. The days grew longer and longer, and of a mild evening the thrush's note was to be heard above the brawling of the stream from the thickets of Dean Terrace Gardens.

Baubie Wishart waited passively. Every day saw her more docile and demure, and every day saw a new scratch added to her tally on the window-shutter behind her bed.

May came, and the days climbed with longer strides to their goal, now close; on reaching which they return slowly and unwillingly, but just as surely; and to her joy, about, the third week in May, Baubie Wishart counted one warm, clear night fifty-nine scratches on the shutter. Fifty-nine! She knew the number well without counting them.

Whether she slept or watched that night is not known, but the next morning at four saw Baubie make a hasty and rather more simple toilette than usual, insomuch as she forgot to wash herself, brush her hair or put on her shoes and stockings. Barefooted and bareheaded, much as she had come, she went. She stole noiselessly as a shadow through the outer dormitory, passing the rows of sleepers with bated breath, and not without a parting glance of triumph at the bed where her rival, Elizabeth Grant, was curled up. Down the wooden stair, her bare feet waking no echoes, glided Baubie, and into the school-room, which looked out on the front green. She opened the window easily, hoisted herself on the sill, crept through and let herself drop on the grass below. To scramble up the trunk of one of the chestnuts and swing herself over the wall was quickly done, and then she was once more on the flagged path of the street, and the world lay before her.

As she stood for one moment, breathless with her haste and excitement, she was startled by the sudden apparition of the house cat, who was on his way home as surreptitiously as she was on hers abroad. He had one bloody ear and a scratched nose, and stared at her as he passed: then, probably in the hope of finding an open door after her, he jumped over the wall hurriedly. Baubie was seized with a sudden panic lest the cat should waken some one in the house, and she took to her heels and ran until she reached the bridge. The morning sun was just beginning to touch the tall tops of the houses, and the little valley through which the Water of Leith ran lay still in a kind of clear grayish light, in which the pale tender hues of the young leaves and the flowering trees were all the more vividly beautiful. The stream was low, and it hurried along over its stony bed, as if it too were running away, and in as great a hurry to be free of all restraints as truant Baubie Wishart, whose red frock was now climbing the hilly gray street beyond.

She could hear, as she strained herself to listen for pursuing voices, the rustle and murmur of the water with an odd distinctness as it rose upon the still air of the summer morning.

Not a creature was to be seen as she made her way eastward, shaping her course for Princes street, and peering, with a gruesome fear of the school-board officer, round every corner. That early bird, however, was not so keenly on the alert as she gave him the credit of being, and she reached her goal unchallenged after coasting along in parallel lines with it for some time.

The long beautiful line of Princes street was untenanted as the Rob Roy tartan tacked cautiously round the corner of St. David street and took a hasty look up and down before venturing forth.

The far-reaching pale red beams of the morning sun had just touched and kindled as with a flame the summit of the Rock, and the windows of the Castle caught and flashed back the greeting in a dozen ruddy reflections. The gardens below lay partly veiled in a clear transparent mist, faintly blue, that hovered above the trees and crept up the banks, and over which the grand outlines of the Rock towered as it lifted its head majestically into the gold halo that lay beyond.

Not a sound or stir, even the sparrows were barely awake, as Baubie darted along. Fixing her eye on that portion of the High School which is visible from Princes street, she pushed along at a pace that was almost a run, and a brief space saw her draw up and fall exhausted on the steps that lead up to the Calton Hill.

Right before her was the jail-gate.

The child's feet, unused now for some time to such hardships, were hot and bruised, for she had not stopped to pick her footing in her hasty course, and she was so out of breath and heated that it seemed to her as if she would never get cool or her heart cease fluttering as if it would choke her. She shrank discreetly against the stone wall at her side, and there for three long hours she remained crouched, watching and waiting for the hour to chime when the grim black gate opposite would open.

The last tinge of crimson and purple had faded before the golden glories of the day as the sun climbed higher and higher in the serene blue sky. The red cliffs of Salisbury Crags glared with a hot lustre above the green slopes of the hill, and in the white dust of the high-road a million tiny stars seemed to sparkle and twinkle most invitingly to Baubie's eyes. The birds had long been awake and busy in the bushes above her head, and from where she sat she could see, in the distant glitter of Princes street, all the stir of the newly-raised day.

It was a long vigil, and her fear and impatience made it seem doubly longer. At last the clock began to chime eight, and before it was half done the wicket in the great door opened with a noisy clang after a preliminary rattle.

First came a boy, who cast an anxious look round him, then set off at a run; next a young woman, for whom another was waiting just out of sight down the road; last of all (there were only three released), Baubie, whose heart was beginning to beat fast again with anxiety, saw the familiar, well-known figure shamble forth and look up and down the road in a helpless, undecided way. The next moment the wicket had clapped to again. Wishart glanced back at it, sighed once or twice, and blinked his eyes as though the sunlight were too strong for them.

Baubie, scarce breathing, watched him as a cat watches just before she springs.

After a second of hesitation he began to move cityward, obeying some sheep-like instinct which impelled him to follow those who had gone on before. Baubie saw this, and, just waiting to let him get well under way and settle into his gait, she gathered herself up and sprang across the road upon him with the suddenness and rapidity of a flash.

He fairly staggered with surprise. There she was, exactly as he had left her, dusty, barefooted and bareheaded. The wind had tossed up her hair, which indeed was only too obedient to its will, and it clustered all the more wildly about her face because of having been cropped to the regulation length of the refuge.

"Lassie, is't you?" he ejaculated, lost in astonishment. Then, realizing the fact, he gave expression to his feeling by grinning in a convulsive kind of way and clapping her once or twice on the shoulder next him. "Od! I niver! Didna the leddy—"

Baubie cut him short. "Sed I widna bide," she observed curtly and significantly.

Gestures and looks convey, among people like the Wisharts, far more meaning than words, and Baubie's father perfectly understood from the manner and tone of her pregnant remark that she had run away from school, and had severed the connection between herself and the "kind leddy," and that in consequence the situation was highly risky for both. They remained standing still for a moment, looking at each other. The boy and the woman were already out of sight, and the white, dusty high-road seemed all their own domain.

Wishart shuffled with his feet once more, and looked in the direction of Princes street, and then at Baubie inquiringly. It was for her, as usual, to decide. Baubie had been his Providence for as long as he had memory for—no great length of time. He was conjecturing in his own mind vaguely whether his Providence had, by any chance, got the desiderated three shillings necessary for the redemption of the banjo hidden away in the Rob Roy tartan. He would not have been surprised had it been so, and he would have asked no questions.

Seeing that her eyes followed the direction of his with a forbidding frown, he said tentatively, "Ye didn'—didna—"

"What?" snapped Baubie crossly: she divined his meaning exactly. "Come awa' wi' ye!" she ordered, facing right round countryward.

"We'll gae awa' til Glasgae, Baubie, eh? I'm thinkin' to yer auntie's. She"—with a gesture of his head backward at the prison—"will no' be oot this month; sae she'll niver need to ken, eh?"

Baubie nodded. He only spoke her own thoughts, and he knew it.

The first turn to the right past the High School brought them out on the road before Holyrood, which lay grim and black under the sun-bathed steeps of Arthur's Seat. On by the Grange and all round the south-eastern portion of the city this odd couple took their way. It was a long round, but safety made it necessary. At last, between Corstorphine's wooded slopes and the steeper rise of the Pentlands, they struck into the Glasgow road. In the same order as before they pursued their journey, Baubie leading as of old, now and again vouchsafing a word over her shoulder to her obedient follower, until the dim haze of the horizon received into itself the two quaint figures, and Baubie Wishart and the Rob Roy tartan faded together out of sight.

The Author of "Flitters, Tatters and the Counsellor."

GAS-BURNING, AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.

"Again," said he, turning down the gas, "if the flame be reduced to a consumption of two feet per hour, its light will be equal to that of one candle only; but on raising the chimney, thus, about half an inch from the gallery or support the light is greatly increased, or by simply placing a disk on top of the chimney the light is increased ninefold; both of which effects seem to result from a diminished current of air, while at the same time there is an ample supply. Lastly, with the ordinary glass moon-globe so generally used in dwellings with the fishtail burner little difference can be perceived between the light given from the flame by four feet and that from six feet of gas per hour, in consequence of the strong current of air passing up through the globe; but if the top of the glass be enclosed by a talc cover having an orifice in the centre about an inch in diameter, then the conditions of the burner are completely changed. The light is greatly increased, because the highest economical advantage is then approached."[2]

"Smoke from the aperture and lamp-black on the cover must result from such an arrangement," objected the old gentleman.

"There need be very little of either," responded the chemist. "From some burners there is little light without smoke. A smoky flame may arise from too much carbon, but the gas companies in this part of the country are not apt to make their product too rich; and such a condition is not likely to occur except with vapor-gas when warm weather quickly succeeds to a cold spell in the winter season. The consumer's immediate remedy in any case is to use a smaller tip with the fishtail and batwing burners, and a taller chimney with the argand; which devices will give a quicker movement to the gas in one case and to the air in the other. The smoking, however, may be caused by carbonic acid, which checks combustion. There is always more or less of this in gas, arising from a partial combustion in the retorts when charging them with coal or while withdrawing the exhausted charge. But it is only by excessively slow and careless work that this can happen to a serious extent. Only an expert can tell when this condition exists, though if the symptoms do not yield to manipulations of the chimney and tap, it may be suspected. There is no effective remedy for this adulteration which can be applied by the consumer except a vigorous complaint against the company which supplies the stuff.

"There remains one burner or lamp to be mentioned, contrived with special reference to health," he continued—"the ventilating standard lamp of Doctor Faraday, used in the House of Lords. In this there is an outer glass by which the vitiated air passes away through the pipe communicating with the external air. The lamp is interesting, but there is a question whether there is any practical advantage in its use. Rutter's ventilating lamp is of different form, having a globe instead of an outer cylinder, the gas and air coming in from above. Some of the best dwellings now being erected in the vicinity of New York are provided with tin pipes leading from the burners to the open air. In some the pipe receives the foul air from an open metallic or mineral shade over the burner; others have a larger pipe enclosing the gas-pipe for ventilation, the tops of the two pipes (including the burner) being enclosed by a globe pierced with holes for fresh air. There is said to result a good ventilation, with economy of gas, an increased steadiness of the flame and power of light. A better arrangement is a third pipe enclosing the gas-pipe and enclosed in the ventilating-pipe, opening to the air, instead of the holes in the globe, which in this case should be air-tight. This plan is said to have reached its perfection when the three pipes are filled with wire gauze to some extent. This, being heated by the escape of hot gases in the ventilating-pipe, sends both the air and the gas to the flame already highly heated. The result is said to be admirable as regards ventilation, steadiness and power of the light and economy of gas.

"With these lamps the pressure of the gas-current is of great importance; and I now turn to that subject. It is a general complaint in buildings whose rooms are high that the flow of gas on the lower floor is deficient, while on the upper floors there is a greater supply than is necessary. This inconvenience arises from the upper stories being subjected to less atmospheric pressure than the lower, every rise of ten feet making a difference in the pressure of about one-tenth of an inch of water; and, consequently, a column of gas acquires that amount of pressure additional. The following table, recording an experiment of Mr. Richards, will show the result in respect to light: