‘Maybe no’.  We’ll look at the shops first, onyhoo, an’ then we’ll gang an’ meet Teen Ba’four.  D’ye mind Teen?’

’Oh yes.  Is she quite well?  She looked so ill that day I saw her.  I could not forget her face.’

’Oh, she’s well enough, I think.  I never asks.  Oor kind gangs on till they drap, an’ then they maistly dee,’ said Liz cheerfully.  ’But Teen will hing on a while yet—­she’s tough.  I dinna see her very often.  My mither disna like her.  She brings me the Reader on Fridays.  Eh, wummin, “Lord Bellew’s Bride” is finished.  Everything was cleared up at the end, an’ the young man Lord Bellew was jealous o’ turns oot to be only her brither.  The last chapter tells aboot the christenin’ o’ the heir, an’ she wears a white brocade goon, trimmed wi’ real pearls an’ ostrich feathers.  Fancy you an’ me in a frock like that!  Wad it no’ mak’ a’ the difference?’

‘I don’t know, I’m sure.  I never thought of it,’ answered Gladys, quietly amused.

‘Hae ye no’?  I often think o’d.  If I lived in a big hoose, rode in a carriage, an’ wore a silk dress every day, I wad be happy, an’ guid too, maybe.  It’s easy to be guid when ye are rich.’

’The Bible doesn’t say so.  Don’t you remember how it explains that it is so hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven?’

Liz looked round in a somewhat scared manner into her companion’s face.

‘D’ye read the Bible?’ she asked bluntly.  ’I never dae, so I canna mind that.  I never thocht onybody read it—­or believed it, I mean—­except ministers that are paid for it.’

‘Oh, that is quite a mistake,’ said Gladys warmly.  ’A great many people read it, because they love it, and because it helps them in the battle of life.  I couldn’t live without it.  Walter and I read it every night.’

Liz drew herself a little apart doubtfully, and looked yet more scrutinisingly into the face of Gladys.

’Upon my word, ye’re less fit than I thocht for this warld.  What were ye born for?  Ye’ll never fecht yer way through,’ she said, with a kind of scornful pity.

’Oh yes, I will.  Perhaps if it came to the real fight, I should prove stronger than you, just because I have that help.  Dear Liz, it is dreadful, if it is true, to live as you do.  Are you not afraid?’

‘I fear naething, except gaun into consumption, an’ haein’ naebody to look after me,’ responded Liz.  ‘If it cam’ to that, I’d tak’ something to pit an end to mysel’.  My mind’s made up on that lang syne.’

She looked quite determined; her full red lips firmly set, and her eyes looking straight before her, calm, steadfast, undaunted, in corroboration of her boast that she feared nothing in the world.

‘But, Liz, that would be very wicked,’ said Gladys, in distress.  ’We have never more to bear than we are able; God takes care of that always.  But I am sure you are only speaking in haste.  I think you have a great deal of courage—­too much to do that kind of thing.’