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dead and turned to clay,” who really put out the fire by rolling on it wrapped in an eiderdown quilt.

“Eh, ye ill callant,” said Bella Bathgate.

“Ye wee deevil,” said Mrs. M’Cosh, “ye micht hev had us a’ burned where we sat, and it Christmas too!”

“What made you do it, sonny?” Jean asked.

“It made it so real,” Mhor explained, “and I knew we could always throw them out of the window if they really blazed. What’s the use of having a funeral pyre if you don’t light it?”

The actors departed to prepare for the next performance Jock coming back to put his head in at the door to ask if they had guessed the first part of the word.

Jean said she thought it must be incendiarism.

“Funeral,” said Miss Watson brightly.

“Huch,” said Jock; “it’s a word of one syllable.”

“I think,” Jean said as the door shut on Jock–I think I know what the word is–pyre.”

“Oh, really,” said Miss Watson, “I’m all shaking yet with the fright I got. He’s an awful bad wee boy that–sort of regardless. He needs a man to look after him.”

“I’ll never forget,” said Miss Teenie, “once I was staying with a friend of ours, a doctor; his mother and our mother were cousins, you know, and when I looked–I was doing my hair at the time–I found that the curtain had blown across the gas and was blazing. If I had been in our own house I would just have rushed out screaming, but when you’re away from home you’ve more feeling of responsibility and I just stood on a chair and pulled at the curtain till I brought it down and stamped on it. My hands were all scorched, and of course the curtain was beyond hope, but when the doctor saw it, he said, ‘Teenie,’ he said–his mither and ours were cousins, you know–‘you’re just a wee marvel.’ That was what he said–‘a wee marvel.'”

Jean said, “You _were_ brave,” and one of the guests said that presence of mind was a wonderful thing, and then the next act was ready.

The word had evidently something to do with eating, for the three actors sat at a Barmecide feast and quaffed wine from empty goblets, and carved imaginary haunches of venison. So far as could be judged from the conversation, which was much obscured by the smothered laughter of the actors, they seemed to belong to Robin Hood’s merry men.

The third act took place on board ship–a ship flying the Jolly Roger–and it was obvious to the meanest intelligence that the word was pirate.

“Very good,” said Miss Teenie, clapping her hands; “but,” addressing the Mhor, “don’t you go lighting any more funeral pyres. Boys who do that have to go to jail.”

Mhor looked coldly at her, but made no remark, while Jean said hastily:

“You must show everyone your wonderful present, Mhor. I think the hall would be the best place to put it up in.”

The second part of the programme was of a varied character. Jean led off with the old carol:

“There comes a ship far sailing then, St. Michael was the steersman,”

and Mhor followed with a poem, “In Time of Pestilence,” which had captivated his strange small boy’s soul, and which he had learned for the occasion. Everyone felt it to be singularly inappropriate, and Miss Watson said it gave her quite a turn to hear the relish with which he knolled out:

“Wit with his wantonness
Tasteth death’s bitterness:
Hell’s executioner
Hath no ears for to hear
What vain art can reply!
I am sick, I must die–
God have mercy on us.”

She regarded him with disapproving eyes as a thoroughly uncomfortable character.

One of the guests sang a drawing-room ballad in which the words “dear heart” seemed to occur with astonishing frequency. Then the entertainment took a distinctly lower turn.

David and Jock sang a song composed by themselves and set to a hymn tune, a somewhat ribald production. Mhor then volunteered the information that Mrs. M’Cosh could sing a song. Mrs. M’Cosh said, “Awa wi’ ye, laddie,” and “Sic havers,” but after much urging owned that she knew a song which had been a favourite with her Andra. It was sung to the tune of “When the kye come hame,” and was obviously a parody on that lyric, beginning:

“Come a’ ye Hieland pollismen
That whustle through the street,
An’ A’ll tell ye a’ aboot a man
That’s got triple expansion feet. He’s got braw, braw tartan whuskers
That defy the shears and kaim:
There’s an awfu’ row in Brigton
When M’Kay comes hame.”

It went on to tell how:

“John M’Kay works down in Singers’s, He’s a ceevil engineer,
But his wife’s no verra ceevil
When she’s had some ginger-beer.
When he missed the last Kilbowie train And had to walk hame lame,
There wis Home Rule wi’ the poker When M’Kay cam hame.”

Mrs. M’Cosh sang four verses and stopped, in spite of the rapturous applause of a section of the audience.

“There’s aboot nineteen mair verses,” she explained “an’ they get kinna worse as they gang on, so I’d better stop,” which she did, to Jean’s relief, for she saw that her guests were feeling that this was not an entertainment such as the Best People indulged in.

“And now Miss Bathgate will sing,” said Mhor.

“I will not sing,” said Miss Bathgate. “I’ve mair pride than make a fool o’ mysel’ to please folk.”

“Oh, come on,” Jock begged. “Look at Mrs. M’Cosh!”

Miss Bathgate snorted.

“Ay,” said Mrs. M’Cosh, with imperturbable good-humour, “she seen me, and she thinks yin auld fool is enough at a time. Never heed, Bella, juist gie us a verse.”

Miss Bathgate protested that she knew no songs, and had no voice, but under persuasion she broke into a ditty, a sort of recitative:

“Gang further up the toon, Geordie Broon, Geordie Broon, Gang further up the toon, Geordie Broon: Gang further up the toon
Till ye’s spent yer hale hauf-croon, And then come singin’ doon,
Geordie Broon, Geordie Broon.”

“I remember that when I was a child,” Jean said. “We used to be put to sleep with it; it is very soothing. Thank you so much, Miss Bathgate … Now I think we should have a game.”

“Forfeits,” Miss Teenie suggested.

“That’s a silly game,” said Mhor; “there’s kissing in it.”

“Perhaps we might have a quiet game,” Jean said. “What was that one we played with Pamela, you remember, Jock? We took a subject, and tried who could say the most obvious thing about it.”

“Oh, nothing clever, for goodness’ sake,” pleaded Miss Watson. “I’ve no head for anything but fancy-work.”

“‘Up Jenkins’ would be best,” Jock decreed; so a table was got in, and “up Jenkins” was played with much laughter until the clock struck ten, and the guests all rose in a body to go.

“Well,” said Miss Watson, “it’s been a very pleasant evening, though I wouldn’t wonder if I had a nightmare about that funeral pyre … I always think, don’t you, that there’s something awful pathetic about Christmas? You never know where you may be before another.”

One of the guests, a little music-teacher, said:

“The worst of Christmas is that it brings back to one’s mind all the other Christmasses and the people who were with us then….”

Bella Bathgate’s voice was heard talking to Mrs. M’Cosh at the door: “I dinna believe in keeping Christmas; it’s a popish festival. New Year’s the time. Ye can eat yer currant-bun wi’ a relish then. Guid-nicht, then, and see ye lick that ill laddie for near settin’ the hoose on fire. It’s no’ safe, I tell ye, to live onywhere near him noo that he’s begun thae tricks. Baith Peter an’ him are fair Bolsheviks … Did I tell ye that Miss Reston sent me a grand feather-boa–grey, in a present? I’ve aye had a notion o’ a feather-boa, but I dinna ken how she kent that. And this is no’ yin o’ the skimpy kind; it’s fine and fussy and soft … Here, did the Lord send Miss Jean a present?… I doot he’s aff for guid. Weel, weel, guid-nicht.”

With a heightened colour Jean said good-night to her guests, separated Mhor from his train, and sent him with Jock to bed.

As she went upstairs, Bella Bathgate’s words rang in her ears dismally: “I doot he’s aff for guid.”

It was what she wanted, of course; she had told him so. But she had half hoped that he might send her a letter or a little remembrance on Christmas Day.

Better not, perhaps, but it would have been something to keep. She sometimes wondered if she had not dreamt the scene in the Hopetoun Woods, and only imagined the words that were constantly in her ears. It was such a very improbable thing to happen to such a commonplace person.

Her room was very restful-looking that night to Jean, tired after a long day’s junketing. It was a plain little upper chamber, with white walls and Indian rugs on the floor. A high south wind was blowing (it had been another of poor Mhor’s snow-less Christmasses!), making the curtains billow out into the room, and she could hear through the open window the sound of Tweed rushing between its banks. On the dressing-table lay a new novel with a vivid paper cover. Jean gave it a little disgusted push. Someone had lent it to her, and she had been reading it between Christmas preparations, reading it with deep distaste. It was about a duel for a man between a woman of forty-five and a girl of eighteen. The girl was called Noel, and was “pale, languid, passionate.” The older woman gave up before the end, and said Time had “done her in.” There were pages describing how she looked in the mirror “studying with a fearful interest the little hard lines and markings there beneath their light coating of powder, fingered and smoothed the slight looseness and fullness of the skin below her chin,” and how she saw herself going down the years, “powdering a little more, painting a little more, touching up her hair till it was all artifice, holding on by every little device….”

A man had written that. What a trade for a man, Jean thought.

She was glad she lived among people who had the decency to go on caring for each other in spite of lines and wrinkles–comfortable couples whose affection for each other was a shelter in the time of storm, a shelter built of common joys, of “fireside talks and counsels in the dawn,” cemented by tears shed over common sorrows.

She smiled to herself as she remembered a little woman who had told her with great pride that, to celebrate their silver wedding, her husband was giving her a complete set of artificial teeth. “And,” she had finished impressively, “you know what teeth cost now.”

And why not? It was as much a token of love as a pearl necklace, and, looked at in the right way, quite as romantic.

“I’d better see how it finishes,” Jean said to herself opening the book a few pages from the end.

Oh yes, there they were at it. Noel, “pale, languid passionate,” and the man “moved beyond control.” “He drew her so close that he could feel the throbbing of her heart …” And the other poor woman with the hard lines and marking beneath the light coating of powder, where had she gone?

Jean pushed the book away, and stood leaning on the dressing-table studying her face in the glass. This was no heroine, “pale, languid, passionate.” She saw a fresh-coloured face with a pointed chin, wide-apart eyes as frank and sunny as a moorland burn, an innocent mouth. It seemed to Jean a very uninteresting face. She was young, certainly, but that was all–not beautiful, or brilliant and witty. Lord Bidborough must see scores of lovely girls. Jean seemed to see them walking past her in a procession–girls who had maids to do their hair in the most approved fashion, constantly renewed girls whose clothes were a dream of daintiness all charming, all witty, all fitted to be wife to a man like Lord Bidborough. What was he doing now, Jean wondered. Perhaps dancing, or sitting out with someone. Jean could see him so clearly, listening, smiling, with lazy, amused eyes. By now he must be thankful that the penny-plain girl at Priorsford had not snatched at the offer he had made her, but had had the sense to send him away. It must have been a sudden madness on his part. He had never said a word of love to her–then suddenly in the rain and mud, when she was looking her very plainest, muffled up in a thick coat, clogged by goloshes, to ask her to marry him!

Jean nodded at the girl in the glass.

“What you’ve got to do is to put him out of your head, and be thankful that you have lots to do, and a house to keep, and boys to make happy, and aren’t a heroine writhing about in a novel.”

But she sighed as she turned away. Doing one’s duty is a dreary business for three-and-twenty. It goes on for such a long time.

CHAPTER XVIII

“It was told me I should be rich by the fairies.”–_A Winter’s Tale._

January is always a long, flat month: the Christmas festivities are over, the bills are waiting to be paid, the weather is very often of the dreariest, spring is yet far distant. With February, hope and the snowdrops begin to spring, but January is a month to be _warstled_ through as best we can.

This January of which I write Jean felt to be a peculiarly long, dull month. She could not understand why, for David was at home, and she had always thought that to have the three boys with her made up the sum of her happiness. She told herself that it was Pamela she missed. It made such a difference knowing that the door would not open to admit that tall figure; the want of the embroidery frame seemed to take a brightness from the room, and the lack of that little gay laugh of Pamela’s left a dullness that the loudest voices did nothing to dispel.

Pamela wrote that the visit to Champertoun had been a signal success. The hitherto unknown cousins were delightful people, and she and her brother were prolonging their stay till the middle of January. Then, she said, she hoped to come back to Priorsford for a little, while Biddy went on to London.

How easy it all sounded, Jean thought. Historic houses full of all things lovely, leisured, delightful people, the money, and the freedom to go where one listed: no pinching, no striving, no sordid cares.

David’s vacation was slipping past; and Jean was deep in preparations for his departure. She longed vehemently for some money to spend. There were so many things that David really needed and was doing without, so many of the things he had were so woefully shabby. Jean understood better now what a young man wanted; she had studied Lord Bidborough’s clothes. Not that the young man was anything of a dandy, but he had always looked right for every occasion. And Jean thought that probably all the young men at Oxford looked like that–poor David! David himself never grumbled. He meant to make money by his pen in spare moments, and his mind was too full of plans to worry much about his shabby clothes. He sometimes worried about his sister, and thought it hard that she should have the cares of a household on her shoulders at an age when other girls were having the time of their lives, but he solaced himself with the thought that some day he would make it up to Jean, that some day she should have everything that now she was missing, full measure pressed down and running over. It never occurred to the boy that Jean’s youth would pass, and whatever he might be able to give her later, he could never give her that back.

Pamela returned to Hillview in the middle of the month, just before David left.

Bella Bathgate owned that she was glad to have her back. That indomitable spinster had actually missed her lodger. She was surprised at her own pleasure in seeing the boxes carried upstairs again, in hearing the soft voice talking to Mawson, in sniffing the faint sweet scent that seemed to hang about the house when Miss Reston was in it, conquering the grimmer odour of naphtha and boiled cabbage which generally held sway.

Bella had missed Mawson too. It was fine to have her back again in her cosy kitchen, enjoying her supper and full of tales of the glories of Champertoun. Bella’s face grew even longer than it was naturally as she heard of the magnificence of that ancient house, of the chapel, of the ballroom, of the number of bedrooms, of the man-servants and maid-servants, of the motors and horses.

“Forty bedrooms!” she said, in scandalised tones. “The thing’s rideeclous. Mair like an institution than a private hoose.”

“Oh, it’s a _gentleman’s_ ‘ouse,” said Mawson proudly–“the sort of thing Miss Reston’s accustomed to. At Bidborough, I’m told, there’s bedrooms to ‘old a regiment, and the same at Mintern Abbas, but I’ve never been there yet. It was all the talk in the servants’ ‘all at Champertoun ‘oo would be Lady Bidborough. There were several likely young ladies there, but ‘e didn’t seem partial to any of them.”

“Whaur’s he awa to the noo?”

“Back to London for a bit, I ‘eard, and later on we’re joining ‘im at Bidborough. Beller, I was thinking to myself when they were h’all talking, what if Lady B. should be a Priorsford lady? His lordship did seem h’attentive in at The Rigs. Wouldn’t it be a fine thing for Miss Jean?”

Miss Bathgate suddenly had a recollection of Jean as she had seen her pass that morning–a wistful face under a shabby hat.

“Hut,” she said, tossing her head and lying glibly. “It’s ma opeenion that the Lord askit Miss Jean when he was in Priorsford, and she simply sent him to the right about.”

She took a drink of tea, with a defiant twirl of her little finger, and pretended not to see the shocked expression on Mawson’s face. To Mawson it sounded like sacrilege for anyone to refuse anything to his lordship.

“Oh, Beller! Miss Jean would ‘ave jumped at ‘im!”

“Naething o’ the kind,” said Miss Bathgate fiercely, forgetting all about her former pessimism as to Jean’s chance of getting a man, and desiring greatly to champion her cause. “D’ye think Miss Jean’s sitting here waitin’ to jump at a man like a cock at a grossit? Na! He’ll be a lucky man that gets her, and weel his lordship kens it. She’s no pented up to the een-holes like thae London Jezebels. Her looks’ll stand wind and water. She’s a kind, wise lassie, and if she condescends to the Lord, I’m sure I hope he’ll be guid to her. For ma ain pairt I wud faur rather see her marry a dacent, ordinary man like a minister or a doctor–but we’ve nane o’ thae kind needin’ wives in Priorsford the noo, so Miss Jean ‘ll mebbe hev to fa’ back on a lord….”

On the afternoon of the day this conversation took place in Hillview kitchen, Jean sat in the living-room of The Rigs, a very depressed little figure. It was one of those days in which things seem to take a positive pleasure in going wrong. To start with, the kitchen range could not go on, as something had happened to the boiler, and that had shattered Mrs. M’Cosh’s placid temper. Also the bill for mending it would be large, and probably the landlord would make a fuss about paying it. Then Mhor had put a newly-soled boot right on the hot bar of the fire and burned it across, and Jock had thrown a ball and broken a precious Spode dish that had been their mother’s. But the worst thing of all was that Peter was lost, had been lost for three days, and now they felt they must give up hope. Jock and Mhor were in despair (which may have accounted for their abandoned conduct in burning boots and breaking old china), and in their hearts felt miserably guilty. Peter had wanted to go with them that morning three days ago; he had stood patiently waiting before the front door, and they had sneaked quietly out at the back without him. It was really for his own good, Jock told Mhor; it was because the gamekeeper had said if he got Peter in the Peel woods again he would shoot him, and they had been going to the Peel woods that morning–but nothing brought any comfort either to Jock or Mhor. For two nights Mhor had sobbed himself to sleep openly, and Jock had lain awake and cried when everyone else was sleeping.

They scoured the country in the daytime, helped by David and Mr. Jowett and other interested friends, but all to no purpose.

“If I knew God had him I wouldn’t mind,” said Mhor, “but I keep seeing him in a trap watching for us to come and let him out. Oh, Peter, _Peter_….”

So Jean felt completely demoralised this January afternoon and sat in her most unbecoming dress, with the fire drearily, if economically, banked up with dross, hoping that no one would come near her. And Mrs. Duff-Whalley and her daughter arrived to call.

It was at once evident that Mrs. Duff-Whalley was on a very high horse indeed. Her accent was at its most superior–not at all the accent she used on ordinary occasions–and her manner was an excellent imitation of that of a lady she had met at one of the neighbouring houses and greatly admired. Her sharp eyes were all over the place, taking in Jean’s poor little home-made frock, the shabby slippers, the dull fire, the depressed droop of her hostess’s shoulders.

Jean was sincerely sorry to see her visitors. To cope with Mrs. Duff-Whalley and her daughter one had to be in a state of robust health and high spirits.

“We ran in, Jean–positively one has time for nothing these days–just to wish you a Happy New-Year though a fortnight of it is gone. And how are you? I do hope you had a very gay Christmas, and loads of presents. Muriel quite passed all limits. I told her I was quite ashamed of the shoals of presents, but of course the child has so many friends. The Towers was full for Christmas. Dear Gordon brought several Cambridge friends, and they were so useful at all the festivities. Lady Tweedie said to me, ‘Mrs. Duff-Whalley, you really are a godsend with all these young men in this unmanned neighbourhood.’ Always so witty, isn’t she? dear woman. By the way, Jean, I didn’t see you at the Tweedies’ dance, or the Olivers’ theatricals.”

“No, I wasn’t there. I hadn’t a dress that was good enough, and I didn’t want to be at the expense of hiring a carriage.”

“Oh, really! We had a small dance at The Towers on Christmas night–just a tiny affair, you know, really just our own house-party and such old friends as the Tweedies and the Olivers. We would have liked to ask you and your brother–I hear he’s home from Oxford–but you know what it is to live in a place like Priorsford: if you ask one you have to ask everybody–and we decided to keep it entirely County–you know what I mean?”

“Oh, quite,” said Jean; “I’m sure you were wise.”

“We were so sorry,” went on Mrs. Duff-Whalley, “that dear Lord Bidborough and his charming sister couldn’t come. We have got so fond of both of them. Muriel and Lord Bidborough have so much in common–music, you know, and other things. I simply couldn’t tear them away from the piano at The Towers. Isn’t it wonderful how simple and pleasant they are considering their lineage? Actually living in that little dog-hole of a Hillview. I always think Miss Bathgate’s such an insolent woman; no notion of her proper place. She looks at me as if she actually thought she was my equal, and wasn’t she positively rude to you, Muriel, when you called with some message?”

“Oh, frightful woman!” said Muriel airily. “She was most awfully rude to me. You would have thought that I wanted to burgle something.” She gave an affected laugh. “I simply stared through her. I find that irritates that class of person frightfully … How do you like my sables, Jean? Yes–a present.”

“They are beautiful,” said Jean serenely, but to herself she muttered bitterly, “Opulent _lumps_!”

“David goes back to Oxford next week,” she said aloud, the thought of money recalling David’s lack of it.

“Oh, really! How exciting for him,” Mrs. Duff-Whalley said. “I suppose you won’t have heard from Miss Reston since she went away?”

“I had a letter from her a few days ago.”

Mrs. Duff-Whalley waited expectantly for a moment, but as Jean said nothing more she continued:

“Did she talk of future plans? We simply must fix them both up for a week at The Towers. Lord Bidborough told us he had quite fallen in love with Priorsford and would be sure to come back. I thought it was so sweet of him. Priorsford is such a dull little place.”

“Yes,” said Jean; “it was very condescending of him.”

Then she remembered Richard Plantagenet, her friend, his appreciation of everything, his love for the Tweed, his passion for the hills, his kindness to herself and the boys–and her conscience pricked her. “But I think he meant it,” she added.

“Well,” Muriel said, “I fail to see what he could find to admire in Priorsford. Of all the provincial little holes! I’m constantly upbraiding Mother for letting my father build a house here. If they had gone two or three miles out, but to plant themselves in a little dull town, always knocking up against the dull little inhabitants! Positively it gets on my nerves. One can’t go out without having to talk to Mrs. Jowett, or a Dawson, or some of the villa dwellers. As I said to Lady Tweedie yesterday when I met her in the Eastgate, ‘Positively,’ I said, ‘I shall _scream_ if I have to say to anyone else, “Yes, isn’t it a nice quiet day for the time of year?”‘ I’m just going to pretend I don’t see people now.”

“Muriel, darling, you mustn’t make yourself unpopular. It’s not like London, you know, where you can pick and choose. I quite agree that the Priorsford people need to be kept in their places, but one needn’t be rude. And some of the people, the aborigines, as dear Gordon calls them, are really quite nice. There are about half a dozen men one can ask to dinner, and that new doctor–I forget his name–is really quite a gentleman. Plays bridge.”

Jean laughed suddenly and Mrs. Duff-Whalley looked inquiringly at her.

“Oh,” she said, blushing, “I remembered the definition of a gentleman in the _Irish R.M._–‘a man who has late dinner and takes in the London _Times_.’ … Won’t you stay to tea?”

“Oh no, thank you, the car is at the gate. We are going on to tea with Lady Tweedie. ‘You simply must spare me an afternoon, Mrs. Duff-Whalley,’ she said to me the other day, and I rang her up and said we would come to-day. Life is really such a rush. And we are going abroad in February and March. We must have some sunshine. Not that we need it for our health, for we’re both as strong as ponies. I haven’t been a day in bed for years, and Muriel the same, I’m thankful to say. We’ve never had to waste money on doctors. And the War kept us so cooped up, it’s really pleasant to feel we can get about again. I thought on our way south we would make a tour of the battlefields. I think one owes it to the men who fought for us to go and visit their graves–poor fellows! I saw Mrs. Macdonald–you go to their church, don’t you?–at a meeting yesterday, and I said if she would give me particulars I’d try and see her boy’s grave. They won’t be able to go themselves, poor souls, and I thought it would be a certain consolation to them to know that a friend had gone. I must say, I think she might have shown more gratitude. She was really quite off-hand. I think ministers’ wives have often bad manners; they deal so much with the working classes….”

Jean thought of a saying she had read of Dr. Johnson’s: “He talked to me at the Club one day concerning Catiline’s conspiracy–so I withdrew my attention and thought about Tom Thumb.” When she came back to Mrs. Duff-Whalley that lady was saying:

“Did you say, Jean, that Miss Reston is coming back to Priorsford soon?”

“Yes, any day.”

“Fancy! And her brother too?”

Jean said she thought not: Lord Bidborough was going to London.

“Ah! then we shall see him there. I don’t know when I met anyone with whom I felt so instantly at home. He has such easy manners. It really is a pleasure to meet a gentleman. I do wish my boy Gordon had seen more of him. I’m sure they would have been friends. So good for a boy, you know, to have a man of the world to go about with. Well, good-bye, Jean. You really look very washed out. What you really need is a thorough holiday and change of scene. Why, you haven’t been away for years. Two months in London would do wonders for you–“

The handle of the door turned and a voice said, “May I come in?” and without waiting for permission Pamela Reston walked in, bare-headed, wrapped in a cloak, and with her embroidery-frame under her arm, as she had come many times to The Rigs during her stay at Hillview.

When Jean heard the voice it seemed to her as if everything was transformed. Mrs. Duff-Whalley and Muriel, their sables and their Rolls-Royce, ceased to be great weights crushing life and light out of her, and became small, ordinary, rather vulgar figures; she forgot her own home-made frock and shabby slippers; and even the fire seemed to feel that things were brightening, for a flame struggled through the backing and gave promise of future cheerfulness.

“Oh, Pamela!” cried Jean. There was more of relief and appeal in her voice than she knew, and Pamela, seeing the visitors, prepared to do battle.

“I thought I should surprise you, Jean, girl. I came by the two train, for I was determined to be here in time for tea.” She slipped off her coat and took Jean in her arms. “It is good to be back…. Ah, Mrs. Duff-Whalley, how are you? Have you kept Priorsford lively through the Christmas-time, you and your daughter?”

“Well, I was just telling Jean we’ve done our best. My son Gordon, and his Cambridge friends, delightful young fellows, you know, _perfect_ gentlemen. But we did miss you and your brother. Is dear Lord Bidborough not with you?”

“My brother has gone to London.”

“Naturally,” said Mrs. Duff-Whalley, nodding her head knowingly. “All young men like London, so gay, you know, restaurants and theatres and night-clubs–“

“Oh, I hope not,” laughed Pamela. “My brother’s rather extraordinary; he cares very little for London pleasures. The open road is all he asks–a born gipsy.”

“Fancy! Well, it’s a nice taste too. But I would rather ride in my car than tramp the roads. I like my comforts. Muriel and I are going to London shortly, on our way to the Continent. Will you be there, Miss Reston?”

“Probably, and if I am Jean will be with me. Do you hear that, Jean?” and paying no attention to the dubious shake of Jean’s head she went on: “We must give Jean a very good time and have lots of parties. Perhaps, Mrs. Duff-Whalley, you will bring your daughter to one of Jean’s parties when you are in London? You have been so very kind to us that we should greatly like to have an opportunity of showing you some hospitality. Do let us know your whereabouts. It would be fun–wouldn’t it, Jean?–to entertain Priorsford friends in London.”

For a moment Mrs. Duff-Whalley looked very like a ferret that wanted to bite; then she smiled and said:

“Well, really, it’s most kind of you. I’m sure Jean should be very grateful to you. You’re a kind of fairy godmother to this little Cinderella. Only Jean must remember that it isn’t very nice to come back to drudgery after an hour or two at the ball,” and she gave an unpleasant laugh.

“Ah, but you forget your fairy tale,” said Pamela. “Cinderella had a happy ending. She wasn’t left to the drudgery, but reigned with the prince in the palace.”

“It’s hardly polite surely,” Muriel put in, “to liken poor little Jean to a cinder-witch.”

Jean laughed and held out a foot in a shabby slipper. “I’ve felt like one all day. It’s been such a grubby day, no kitchen range on, no hot water, and Mrs. M’Cosh actually out of temper. Now you’ve come, Pamela, it will be all right–but it has been wretched. I hadn’t the spirit to change my frock or put on decent slippers, that’s why I’ve reminded you all of Cinderella…. Are you going, Mrs. Duff-Whalley? Good-bye.”

Mrs. Duff-Whalley had, with an effort, regained her temper, and was now all smiles.

“We must see you often at The Towers while you are in Priorsford, dear Miss Reston. Muriel and I are on our way to tea with Lady Tweedie. She will be so excited to hear you are back. You have made quite a _place_ for yourself in our little circle. Good-bye, Jean, we shall be seeing you some time. Come, Muriel. Well–t’ta.”

When the visitors had rolled away in their car Jean told Pamela about Peter.

“I couldn’t tell you before those opulent, well-pleased people. It’s absolutely breaking our hearts. Mrs. M’Cosh looks ten years older, and Jock and Mhor go about quite silent thinking out wicked things to do to relieve their feelings. David has gone over all the hills looking for him, but he may be lying trapped in some wood. Come and speak to Mrs. M’Cosh for a minute. Between Peter and the boiler she is in despair.”

They found Mrs. M’Cosh baking with the gas oven.

“It’s a scone for the tea. When I seen Miss Reston it kinna cheered me up. Hae ye tell’t her aboot Peter?”

“He will turn up yet, Mrs. M’Cosh,” Pamela assured her. “Peter’s such a clever dog, he won’t let himself be beat. Even if he is trapped I believe he will manage to get out.”

“It’s to be hoped so, for the want o’ him is something awful.”

A knock came to the back door and a boy’s voice said, “Is Peter in?” It was a message boy who knew all Peter’s tricks–knew that however friendly Peter was with a message boy on the road, he felt constrained to jump out at him when he appeared at the back door with a basket. The innocent question was too much for Mrs. M’Cosh.

“Na,” she said bitterly. “Peter’s no’ in, so ye needna hold on to the door. Peter’s lost. Deid, as likely as not.” She turned away in bitterness of heart, leaving Jean to take the parcels from the boy.

The boys came in quietly after another fruitless search. They did not ask hopefully, as they had done at first, if Peter had come home, and Jean did not ask how they had fared.

The sight of Pamela cheered them a good deal.

“Does she know?” Jock asked, and Jean nodded.

Pamela kept the talk going through tea, and told them so many funny stories that they had to laugh.

“If only,” said Mhor, “Peter was here now the Honourable’s back we would be happy.”

“There’s a big box of hard chocolates behind that cushion,” Pamela said, pointing to the sofa.

It was at that moment that the door opened, and Mrs. M’Cosh put her head in. Her face wore a broad smile.

“The wanderer has returned,” she said.

At that moment Jean thought the Glasgow accent the most delightful thing on earth and the smile on Mrs. M’Cosh’s face the most beautiful. With a shout they all made for the kitchen.

There was Peter, thin and dirty, but in excellent spirits, wagging his tail so violently that his whole body wagged.

“See,” said Mrs. M’Cosh, “he’s been in a trap, but he’s gotten out. Peter’s a cliver lad.”

Jock and Mhor had no words. They lay on the linoleum-covered floor while Mrs. M’Cosh fetched hot milk, and crushed their faces against the little black-and-white body they had thought they might never see again, while Peter licked his own torn paw and their faces in turn.

* * * * *

It was wonderfully comfortable to see Pamela settle down in the corner of the sofa with her embroidery and ask news of all her friends. Jean had been a little shy of meeting Pamela, wondering if Lord Bidborough had told her anything, wondering if she were angry that Jean should have had such an offer, or resentful that she had refused it. But Pamela talked quite naturally about her brother, and gave no hint that she knew of any reason why Jean should blush when his name was mentioned.

“And how are all the people–the Jowetts and the Watsons and the Dawsons? And the dear Macdonalds? I picked up a book in Edinburgh that I think Mr. Macdonald will like. And Lewis Elliot–have you seen him lately, Jean?”

“He’s away. Didn’t you know? He went just after you did. He was in London at Christmas–at least, that was the postmark on the parcels, but he has never written a word. He was always a bad correspondent, but he’ll turn up one of these days.”

Mrs. M’Cosh came in with the letters from the evening post.

“Actually a letter for me,” said Jean, “from London. I expect it’s from that landlord of ours. Surely he won’t be giving us notice to leave The Rigs. Pamela, I’m afraid to open it. It looks like a lawyer’s letter.”

“Open it then.”

Jean opened it slowly and read the enclosure with a puzzled frown; then she dropped it with a cry.

Pamela looked up from her work to see Jean with tears running down her face. Jock and Mhor stopped what they were doing and came to look at her. Peter rubbed himself against her legs by way of comfort.

“My dear,” said Pamela, “is there anything wrong?”

“Oh, do you remember the little old man who came one day to look at the house and stayed to tea and I sang ‘Strathairlie’ to him? He’s dead.”

Jean’s tears flowed afresh as she said the words. “How I wish I had been kinder to him. I somehow felt he was ill.”

“And why have they written to tell you?” Pamela asked.

Jean picked up the letter which had fallen on the floor.

“It’s from his lawyer, and he says he has left me money…. Read it, Pamela. I don’t seem able to see the words.”

So Pamela read aloud the letter that converted poverty-stricken Jean into a very wealthy woman.

Jean’s face was dead white, and she lay back as if stunned, while Jock gave solemn utterance to the most complicated ejaculation he had yet achieved: “Goodness-gracious-mercy-Moses-Murphy-mumph-mumph-mumph!”

Mhor said nothing, but stared with grave green eyes at the stricken figure of the heiress.

“It’s awful,” Jean moaned.

“But, my dear,” said Pamela, “I thought you wanted to be rich.”

“Oh–rich in a gentle way, a few hundreds a year–but this–“

“Poor Jean, buried under bullion.”

“You’re all looking at me differently already,” cried poor Jean. “Mhor, it’s just the same me. Money can’t make any real difference. Don’t stare at me like that.”

“Will Peter have a diamond collar now?” Mhor asked.

“Awful effect of sudden riches,” said Pamela.

“Bear up, Jean–I’ve no doubt you’ll be able to get rid of your money. Just think of all the people you will be able to help. You needn’t spend it on yourself you know.”

“No, but suppose it’s the ruin of the boys! I’ve often heard of sudden fortunes making people go all wrong.”

“Now, Jean, does Jock look as if anything so small as a fortune could put him wrong? And David–by the way, where is David?”

“Out,” said Jock, “getting something at the stationer’s. Let me tell him when he comes in.”

“Then I’ll tell Mrs. M’Cosh,” cried Mhor, and, followed by Peter, he rushed from the room.

The colour was beginning to come back to Jean’s face, and the stunned look to go out of her eyes.

“Why in the world has he left it to me?” she asked Pamela.

“You see the lawyer suggests coming to see you. He will explain it all. It’s a wonderful stroke of luck, Jean. No wonder you can’t take it in.”

“I feel like the little old woman in the nursery-rhyme who said, ‘This is none of I.’ I’m bound to wake up and find I’ve dreamt it…. Oh, Mrs. M’Cosh!”

“It’s the wee laddie Scott to say his mother canna come and wash the morn’s mornin’; she’s no weel. It’s juist as weel, seein’ the biler’s gone wrang. I suppose I’d better gie the laddie a piece?”

“Yes, and a penny.” Then Jean remembered her new possessions. “No, give him this, please, Mrs. M’Cosh.”

Mrs. M’Cosh received the coin and gasped. “Hauf a croon!” she said.

“Silver,” said Pamela, “is to be no more accounted of than it was in the days of Solomon!”

“D’ye ken whit ye’ll dae?” demanded Mrs. M’Cosh. “Ye’ll get the laddie taen up by the pollis. Gie him thruppence–it’s mair wise-like.”

“Oh, very well,” said Jean, thwarted at the very beginning of her efforts in philanthropy. “I’ll go and see his mother to-morrow and find out what she needs. Have you heard the news, Mrs. M’Cosh?”

Mrs. M’Cosh came farther into the room and folded her hands on her snow-white apron.

“Weel, Mhor came in and tell’t me some kinna story aboot a lot o’ money, but I thocht he was juist bletherin’. Is’t a fac’?”

“It would seem to be. The lawyer in London writes that Mr. Peter Reid–d’you perhaps remember an old man who came here to tea one day in October?–he came from London and lived at the Temperance–has left me all his fortune, which is a large one. I can’t think why…. And I thought he was so poor, I wanted to have him here to stay, to save him paying hotel bills. Poor man, he must have been very friendless when he left his money to a stranger.”

“It’s a queer turn up onyway. I juist hope it’s a’ richt. But I would see it afore ye spend it. I wis readin’ a bit in the papers the ither day aboot a wumman who got word o’ a fortune sent her, and went and got a’ sorts o’ braw claes and things ower the heid o’t, and here it wis a’ a begunk. And a freend o’ mine hed a husband oot aboot Canada somewhere, and she got word o’ his death, and she claimed the insurance, and got verra braw blacks, and here wha should turn up but his lordship, as leevin’ as you or me! Eh, puir thing, she wis awfu’ annoyed…. You be carefu’, Miss Jean, and see the colour o’ yer money afore ye begin giein’ awa’ hauf-croons instead o’ pennies.”

CHAPTER XIX

“O, I wad like to ken–to the beggar-wife says I– Why chops are guid to brander and nane sae guid to fry, An’ siller, that’s sae braw to get, is brawer still to gie. –_It’s gey an’ easy speirin’_, says the beggar-wife to me.”

R.L.S.

It is always easier for poor human nature to weep with those who weep than to rejoice with those who rejoice. Into our congratulations to our more fortunate neighbour we often manage to squeeze something of the “hateful rind of resentment,” forgetting that the cup of life is none too sweet for any of us, and needs nothing of our bitterness added.

Jean had not an enemy in the world, almost everyone wished her well, but in very few cases was there any marked enthusiasm about her inheritance. “Ridiculous,” was the most frequent comment: or “Fancy that little thing!” It seemed absurd that such an unimportant person should have had such a large thing happen to her.

Pamela was frankly disgusted with the turn things had taken. She had intended giving Jean such a good time; she had meant to dress her and amuse her and settle her in life. Peter Reid had destroyed all her plans, and Jean would never now be dependent on her for the pleasures of life.

She wrote to her brother:

“Jean seems to be one of the people that all sorts of odd things happen to, and now fortune has played one of her impish tricks and Jean has become a very considerable heiress. And I was there, oddly enough, when the god in the car alighted, so to speak, at The Rigs.

“One afternoon, just after I came to Priorsford, I went in after tea and found the Jardines entertaining a shabby-looking elderly man. They were all so very nice to him that I thought he must be some old family friend, but it turned out that none of them had seen him before that afternoon. He had asked to look over the house, and told Jean that he had lived in it as a boy, and Jean, remarking his rather shabby clothes and frail appearance, jumped to the conclusion that he had failed in life and–you know Jean–was at once full of tenderness and compassion. At his request she sang to him a song he had heard his mother sing, and finished by presenting him with the song-book containing it–a somewhat rare collection which she valued.

“This shabby old man, it seems, was one Peter Reid, a wealthy London business man, and owner of The Rigs, born and bred in Priorsford, who had just heard from his doctor that he had not long to live, and had come back to his childhood’s home meaning to die there. He had no relations and few friends, and had made up his mind to leave his money to the first person who did anything for him without thought of payment. (He seems to have been a hard, suspicious type of man who had not attracted kindness.) So Fate guided his steps to Jean, and this is the result. Yes, rather far-fetched, I agree, but Fate is often like a novelette.

“Mr. Peter Reid had meant to ask the Jardines to leave The Rigs and let him settle there, but–there must have been a soft part somewhere in the hard little man–he hadn’t the heart to do it when he found how attached they were to the place.

“I was at The Rigs when the lawyer’s letter came. Jean as an heiress is very funny and, at the same time, horribly touching. At first she could think of nothing but that the lonely old man she had tried to be kind to was dead, and wept bitterly. Then as she began to realise the fact of the money she was aghast, suffocated with the thought of her own wealth. She told us piteously that it wouldn’t change her at all. I think the poor child already felt the golden barrier that wealth builds round its owners. I don’t think Mr. Peter Reid was kind, though perhaps he meant to be. Jean is such a conscientious, anxious pilgrim at any time, and I’m afraid the wealth will hang round her neck like the Ancient Mariner’s albatross.

” … I have been wondering, Biddy, how this will affect your chances. I know you felt as I did how nice it would be to give Jean all the things that she has never had and which money can buy. I admit I am horribly disappointed about it, but I’m not at all sure that this odd trick of fortune’s won’t help you. Her attitude was that marriage with you was unthinkable; you had so much and she had so little. Well, this evens things up. _Don’t come. Don’t write._ Leave her alone to try her wings. She will want to try all sorts of schemes for helping people, and I’m afraid the poor child will get many bad falls. So long as she remains in Priorsford with people like Mrs. Hope and the Macdonalds to watch over her she can’t come to any harm. Don’t be anxious. Honestly, Biddy, I think she cares for you. I’m glad you asked her when she was poor.”

* * * * *

When the news of Jean’s fortune broke over Priorsford, tea-parties had no lack of material for conversation.

Miss Watson and Miss Teenie, much more excited than Jean herself, ranged gaily round the circle of their acquaintances, drank innumerable cups of tea, and discussed the matter in all its bearings.

“Isn’t it strange to think of Miss Jean as an heiress? Such a plain little thing–in her clothes, I mean, for she has a bit sweet wee face. I don’t know how she’ll ever do in a great big house with butlers and things. I expect she’ll leave The Rigs now. It’s no place for an heiress. Perhaps she’ll build a house like The Towers. No; you’re right: she’ll look for an old house; she always had such queer ideas about liking old things and plain things…. Well, when she had a wee house it had a wide door. I hope when she gets a big house it won’t have a narrow door. Money sometimes changes people’s very natures…. It’s a funny business; you never really know what’ll happen to you in this world. Anyway, I don’t grudge it to Miss Jean, though, mind you, I don’t think myself that she’ll carry off money well. She hasn’t presence enough, if you know what I mean. She’ll never look the thing in a big motor, and you can’t imagine her being haughty to people poorer than herself. She has such a way of putting herself beside folk–even a tinker-body on the road!”

Miss Bathgate heard the news with sardonic laughter.

“So that’s the latest! Miss Jean’s gaun to be upsides wi’ the best o’ them! Puir lamb, puir lamb! I hope the siller ‘ll bring her happiness, but I doot it … I yince kent some folk that got a fortune left them. He was a beadle in the U.F. Kirk at Kirkcaple, a dacent man wi’ a wife and dochter, an’ by some queer chance they came into a heap o’ siller, an’ a hoose–a mansion hoose, ye ken. They never did mair guid, puir bodies. The hoose was that big that the only kinda cosy place they could see to sit in was the butler’s pantry, an’ they took to drink, fair for want o’ anything else to dae. I’ve heard tell that they took whisky to their porridges, but that’s mebbe a lee. Onyway, the faither and mither sune died off, and the dochter went to board wi’ the minister an’ his wife, to see if they could dae onything wi’ her. I mind seein’ her yince. She was sittin’ horn-idle, an’ I said to her, ‘D’ye niver tak’ up a stockin’?’ and she says, ‘I dinna _need_ to dae naething.’ ‘But,’ I says, ‘a stockin’ keeps your hands busy, an’ keeps ye frae wearyin’,’ but she juist said, ‘I tell ye I dinna need to dae naething. I whiles taks a ride in a carriage.’ … It was a sorry sicht, I can tell ye, to see a dacent lass ruined wi’ siller…. Weel, Miss Jean ‘ll get a man noo. Nae fear o’ that,” and Miss Bathgate repeated her cynical lines about the lass “on Tintock tap.”

Mrs. Hope was much excited when she heard, more especially when she found who Jean’s benefactor was.

“Reids who lived in The Rigs thirty years ago? But I knew them. I know all about them. It was I who suggested to Alison Jardine that the cottage would suit her. She had lost a lot of money and wanted a small place…. Why, bless me, Augusta, Mrs. Reid, this man’s mother, came from Corlaw; her people were tenants of my father’s. What was the name? I used to be taken to their house by my nurse and get an oatcake with sugar sprinkled on it–a great luxury, I thought. Yes, of course, Laidlaw. She was Jeannie Laidlaw. When I married and came to Hopetoun I often went to see Mrs. Reid. She reminded me of Corlaw, and could talk of my father, and I liked that…. Her husband was James Reid. He must have had some money, and I think he was retired. He had a beard and came from Fife. I remember the east-country tone in his voice. They went to the Free Kirk, and I overheard, one day, a man say to him as we came out of church (where a retiring collection for the next Sunday had been announced), ‘There’s an awfu’ heap o’ collections in oor kirk,’ and James Reid replied, ‘Ou ay, but ma way is to pay no attention.’ When I told your father he was delighted and said that he must take that for his motto through life–‘Ma way is to pay no attention.'”

Mrs. Hope took off her glasses and smiled to herself over her recollections…. “Mrs. Reid was a nice creature, ‘fair bigoted,’ as they say here, on her son Peter. He was her chief topic of conversation. Peter’s cleverness, Peter’s kindness to his mother, Peter’s good looks, Peter’s fine voice: when I saw him–well, I thought we should all thank God for our mothers, for no one else will ever see us with such kind eyes…. And it’s this Peter Reid–Jeannie Laidlaw’s son–who has enriched Jean. Well, Augusta, I must say I consider it rather a liberty.”

Augusta looked at her mother with an amused smile.

“Yes, Augusta, it was a pushing, interfering sort of thing to do. What is the child to do with a great fortune? I’m not afraid of her being spoiled. Money won’t vulgarise Jean as it does so many people, but it may turn her into a very burdened, anxious pilgrim. She is happier poor. The pinch of too little money is a small thing compared to the burden of too much. The doing without is good for both body and soul, but the great possessions are apt to harden our hearts and make our souls small and meagre. Who would have thought that little Jean would have had the hard hap to become heir to them. But she has a high heart. She may make a success of being a rich woman! She has certainly made a success of being a poor one.”

“I think,” said Augusta, in her gentle voice, “that Peter Reid was a wise man to leave his money to Jean. Only the people who have been poor know how to give, and Jean has imagination and an understanding heart. Haven’t you noticed what a wonderful way she has with the poor people? She is always welcome in the cottages…. And think what a delight she will have in spending money on the boys! But I hope Pamela Reston will do as she had planned and carry Jean off for a real holiday. I should like to see her for a little while spend money like water, buy all manner of useless lovely things, and dine and dance and go to plays.”

Mrs. Hope put up her glasses to regard her daughter.

“Dear me, Augusta, am I hearing right? Who is more severe than you on the mad women who dance, and sup, and frivol their money away? But there’s something in what you say. The bairn needs a playtime…. To think that Jeannie Laidlaw’s son should change the whole of Jean’s life. Preposterous!”

* * * * *

Mrs. Duff-Whalley was having tea with Mrs. Jowett when the news was broken to her. It was a party, but only, as Mrs. Duff-Whalley herself would have put it, “a purely local affair,” meaning some people on the Hill.

Mrs. Jowett sat in her soft-toned room, pouring out tea into fragile cups with hands that seemed to demand lace ruffles, so white were they and transparent. The room was like herself, exquisitely fresh and dainty; white walls hung with pale water-colours in gilt frames, Indian rugs of soft pinks and blues and greys, plump cushions in worked muslin covers that looked as if they were put on fresh every morning. Photographs stood about of women looking sweetly into vacancy over the heads of pretty children, and books of verses, bound daintily in white and gold, lay on carved tables.

Mrs. Duff-Whalley did not care for Mrs. Jowett’s tea-parties, and she always felt irritated by her drawing-room. The gentle voice of her hostess made her want to speak louder than usual, and she thought the conversation insipid to a degree. How could it be anything but insipid with Mrs. Jowett saying only “How nice,” or “What a pity” at intervals? She did not even seem to care to hear Mrs. Duff-Whalley’s news of “the County,” and “dear Lady Tweedie,” merely murmuring, “Oh, really,” when told the most interesting and even startling facts.

“Uninterested idiot,” thought Mrs. Duff-Whalley to herself as she turned from her hostess to Miss Mary Duncan, who at least had some sense, though both she and her sisters had a lamentable lack of style.

Miss Duncan’s kind face beamed pleasantly. She was quite willing to listen to Mrs. Duff-Whalley as long as that lady pleased. She thought she needed soothing, so she agreed with everything she said, and made sensible little remarks at intervals. Mrs. Jowett was pouring out a second cup of tea for Mrs. Duff-Whalley when she said, “And have you heard about dear little Jean Jardine?”

“Has anything happened to her? I saw her the other day and she was all right.”

“She’s quite well, but haven’t you heard? She has inherited a large fortune.”

Mrs. Duff-Whalley said nothing for a minute. She could not trust herself to speak. Despised Jean, whom she had not troubled to ask to her parties, whom she had always felt she could treat anyhow, so poor was she and of no account. It had been bad enough to know that she was on terms of intimacy with Pamela Reston and her brother: to hear Miss Reston say that she meant to take her to London and entertain for her and to hear her suggest that Muriel might go to Jean’s parties had been galling, but she had thrust the recollection from her, reflecting that fine ladies said much that they did not mean, and that probably the promised visit to London would never materialise. And now to be told this! A fortune: Jean–it was too absurd!

When she spoke, her voice was shrill with anger in spite of her efforts to control it.

“It can’t be true. The Jardines have no relations that could leave them money.”

“This isn’t a relation,” Mrs. Jowett explained. “It’s someone Jean was kind to quite by chance. I think it is _so_ sweet. It quite makes one want to cry. _Dear_ Jean!”

Mrs. Duff-Whalley looked at the sentimental woman before her with bitter scorn.

“It would take more than that to make me cry,” she snorted. “I wonder what fool wanted to leave Jean money. Such an unpractical creature! She’ll simply make ducks and drakes of it, give it away to all and sundry, pauperise the whole neighbourhood.”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” Miss Duncan broke in. “She has had a hard training, poor child. Such a pathetic mite she was when her great-aunt died and left her with David and Jock and the little Gervase Taunton! No one thought she could manage, but she did, and she has been so plucky, she deserves all the good fortune that life can bring her. I’m longing to hear what Jock says about this. I do like that boy.”

“They are, all three, dear boys,” said Mrs. Jowett. “Tim and I quite feel as if they were our own. Tim, dear,” to that gentleman, who had bounced suddenly and violently into the room, “we are talking about the great news–Jean’s fortune–“

“Ah yes, yes,” said Mr. Jowett, distributing brusque nods to the women present. “What I want is a bit of thick string.” (His wife’s delicate drawing-room hardly seemed the place to look for such a thing.) “No, no tea, my dear. I told you I wanted a bit of _thick string_…. Yes, let’s hope it won’t spoil Jean, but I think it’s almost sure to. Fortune hunters, too. Bad thing for a girl to have money…. Yes, yes, I asked the servants and Chart brought me the string basket, but it was all thin stuff. I’ll lose the post, but it’s always the way. Every day more rushed than another. Remind me, Janetta, to get some thick string to-morrow. I’ve no time to go down to the town to-day. Why, bless me, my morning letters are hardly looked at yet,” and he fussed himself out of the room.

Mrs. Duff-Whalley rose to go.

“Then, Mrs. Jowett, I can depend on you to look after that collecting? And please be firm. I find that collectors are apt to be very lazy and unconscientious. Indeed, one told me frankly that in her district she only went to the people she knew. That isn’t the way to collect. The only way is to get into each house–to stand on the doorstep is no use, they can so easily send a maid to refuse–and sit there till they give a subscription. Every year since I took it on there has been an increase, and I’ll be frightfully disappointed if you let it go back.”

Mrs. Jowett looked depressed. She knew herself to be one of the worst collectors on record. She was guiltily aware that she often advised people not to give; that is, if she thought their circumstances straitened!

“I don’t know,” she began, “I’m afraid I could never sit in a stranger’s house and insist on being given money. It’s so–so high-handed, like a highwayman or something.”

“Think of the cause,” said Mrs. Duff-Whalley, “not of your own feelings.”

“Yes, of course, but … well, if there is a deficit, I can always raise my own subscription to cover it.” She smiled happily at this solution of the problem.

Mrs. Duff-Whalley sniffed.

“‘The conies are a feeble folk,'” she quoted rudely. “Well, good-bye. I shall send over all the papers and collecting books to-morrow. Muriel and I go off to London on Friday _en route_ for the south. It will be pleasant to have a change and meet some interesting people. Muriel was just saying it’s a cabbage’s life we live in Priorsford. I often wonder we stay here….”

Mrs. Duff-Whalley went home a very angry woman. After dinner, sitting with Muriel before the fire in the glittering drawing-room, she discussed the matter.

“I know what’ll be the end of it,” she said. “You saw what a fuss Miss Reston made of Jean the other day when we called? Depend upon it, she knew the money was coming. I dare say she and her brother are as poor as church mice–those aristocrats usually are–and Jean’s money will come in useful. Oh, we’ll see her Lady Bidborough yet…. I tell you what it is, Muriel, the way this world’s managed is past speaking about.”

Mrs. Duff-Whalley was knitting a stocking for her son Gordon (her hands were seldom idle), and she waved it in her exasperation as she talked.

“Here are you, meant, as anyone can see, for the highest position, and instead that absurd little Jean is to be cocked up, a girl with no more dignity than a sparrow, who couldn’t keep her place with a washerwoman. I’ve heard her talking to these cottage women as if they were her sisters.”

Muriel leant back in her chair and seemed absorbed in balancing her slipper on her toe.

“My dear mother,” she said, “why excite yourself? It isn’t clever of you to be so openly annoyed. People will laugh. I don’t say I like it any better than you do, but I hope I have the sense to purr congratulations. We can’t help it anyway. You and I aren’t attracted to Jean, but there’s no use denying most people are. And what’s more, they keep on liking her. She isn’t a person people get easily tired of. I wish I knew her secret. I suppose it is charm–a thing that can’t be acquired.”

“What nonsense, Muriel! I wonder to hear you. I’d like to know who has charm if you haven’t. It is a silly word anyway.”

Muriel shook her head. “It’s no good posing when we are by ourselves. As a family we totally lack charm. Minnie tries to make up for it by a great deal of manner and a loud voice. Gordon–well, it doesn’t matter so much for a man, but you can see his friends don’t really care about him much. They take his hospitality and say he isn’t a bad sort. They know he is a snob, and when he tries to be funny he is often offensive, poor Gordon! I’ve got a pretty face, and I play games well, so I am tolerated, but I have hardly one real friend. The worst of it is I know all the time where I am falling short, and I can’t help it. I feel myself jar on people. I once heard old Mrs. Hope say that it doesn’t matter how vulgar we are, so long as we know we are being vulgar. But that isn’t true. It’s not much fun to know you are being vulgar and not be able to help it.”

Mrs. Duff-Whalley gave a convulsed ejaculation, but her daughter went on.

“Sometimes I’ve gone in of an afternoon to see Jean, and found her darning stockings in her shabby frock, with a look on her face as if she knew some happy secret; a sort of contented, brooding look–and I’ve envied her. And so I talked of all the gaieties I was going to, of the new clothes I was getting, of the smart people we know, and all the time I was despising myself for a fool, for what did Jean care! She sat there with her mind full of books and poetry and those boys she is so absurdly devoted to; it was nothing to her how much I bucked; and this fortune won’t change her. Money is nothing–“

Mrs. Duff-Whalley gasped despairingly to hear her cherished daughter talking, as she thought, rank treason.

“Oh, Muriel, how you can! And your poor father working so hard to make a pile so that we could all be nice and comfortable. And you were his favourite, and I’ve often thought how proud he would have been to see his little girl so smart and pretty and able to hold her own with the best of them. And I’ve worked too. Goodness knows I’ve worked hard. It isn’t as easy as it looks to keep your end up in Priorsford and keep the villa-people in their places, and force the County to notice you. If I had been like Mrs. Jowett you would just have had to be content with the people on the Hill. Do you suppose I haven’t known they didn’t want to come here and visit us? Oh, I knew, but I _made_ them. And it was all for you. What did I care for them and their daft-like ways and their uninteresting talk about dogs and books and things! It would have been far nicer for me to have made friends with the people in the little villas. My! I’ve often thought how I would relish a tea-party at the Watsons’! Your father used to have a saying about it being better to be at the head of the commonalty than at the tail of the gentry, and I know it’s true. Mrs. Duff-Whalley of The Towers would be a big body at the Miss Watsons’ tea-parties, and I know fine I’m only tolerated at the Tweedies’ and the Olivers’ and all the others.”

“Poor Mother! You’ve been splendid!”

“If you aren’t happy, what does anything matter? I’m fair disheartened, I tell you. I believe you’re right. Money isn’t much of a blessing. I’ve never said it to you because you seemed so much a part of all the new life, with your accent and your manners and your little dogs, but over and over when people snubbed me, and I had to talk loud and brazen because I felt so ill at ease, I’ve thought of the old days when I helped your father in the shop. Those were my happiest days–before the money came. I had a girl to look after the house and you children, and I went between the house and the shop, and I never had a dull minute. Then we came into some money, and that helped your father to extend and extend. First we had a house in Murrayfield–and, my word, we thought we were fine. But I aimed at Drumsheugh Gardens, and we got there. Your father always gave in to me. Eh, he was a hearty man, your father. If it’s true what you say that none of you have charm, though I’m sure I don’t know what you mean by it, it’s my blame, for your father was popular with everyone. He used to laugh at me and my ambition, for, mind you, I was always ambitious, but his was kindly laughter. Often and often when I’ve been sitting all dressed up at some dinner-party, like to yawn my head off with the dull talk, I’ve thought of the happy days when I helped in the shop and did my own washing–eh, I little thought I would ever live in a house where we never even know when it’s washing day–and went to bed tired and happy, and fell asleep behind your father’s broad back….”

“Oh, Mother, don’t cry. It’s beastly of me to discourage you when you’ve been the best of mothers to me. I wish I had known my father better, and I do wish I could remember when we were all happy in the little house. You’ve never been so very happy in The Towers, have you, Mother?”

“No, but I wouldn’t leave it for the world. Your father was so proud of it. ‘It’s as like a hydro as a private house can be,’ he often said, in such a contented voice. He just liked to walk round and look at all the contrivances he had planned, all the hot-rails and things in the bathrooms and cloakrooms, and radiators in every room, and the wonderful pantries–‘tippy,’ he called them. He couldn’t understand people making a fuss about old houses, and old furniture, grey walls half tumbling down and mouldy rooms. He liked the new look of The Towers, and he said to me, ‘Mind, Aggie, I’m not going to let you grow any nonsense like ivy or creepers up this fine new house. They’re all very well for holding together tumbledown old places, but The Towers doesn’t need them. And I’m sure he would be pleased to-day if he saw it. The times people have advised me to grow ivy–even Lady Tweedie, the last time she came to tea–but I never would. It’s as new-looking as the day he left it…. You don’t want to leave The Towers, Muriel?”

“No–o, but–don’t you think, Mother, we needn’t work quite so hard for our social existence? I mean, let’s be more friendly with the people round us, and not strive so hard to keep in with the County set. If Miss Reston can do it, surely we can.”

“But don’t you see,” her mother said, “Miss Reston can do it just because she is Miss Reston. If you’re a Lord’s daughter you can be as eccentric as you like, and make friends with anyone you choose. If we did it, they would just say, ‘Oh, so they’ve come off their perch!’ and once we let ourselves down we would never raise ourselves again. I couldn’t do it, Muriel. Don’t ask me.”

“No. But we’ve got to be happier somehow. Climbing is exhausting work.” She stooped and picked up the two small dogs that lay on a cushion beside her. “Isn’t it, Bing? Isn’t it, Toutou? You’re happy, aren’t you? A warm fire and a cushion and some mutton-chop bones are good enough for you. Well, we’ve got all these and we want more…. Mother, perhaps Jean would tell us the secret of happiness.”

“As if I’d ask her,” said Mrs. Duff-Whalley.

CHAPTER XX

“Marvell, who had both pleasure and success, who must have enjoyed life if ever man did, … found his happiness in the garden where he was.”–From an article in _The Times Literary Supplement._

Mrs. M’Cosh remained extremely sceptical about the reality of the fortune until the lawyer came from London, “yin’s errand to see Miss Jean,” as she explained importantly to Miss Bathgate, and he was such an eminently solid, safe-looking man that her doubts vanished.

“I wud say he wis an elder in the kirk, if they’ve onything as respectable as an elder in England,” was her summing up of the lawyer.

Mr. Dickson (of Dickson, Staines, & Dickson), though a lawyer, was a human being, and was able to meet Jean with sympathy and understanding when she tried to explain to him her wishes.

First of all, she was very anxious to know if Mr. Dickson thought it quite fair that she should have the money. Was he _quite_ sure that there were no relations, no one who had a real claim?

Mr. Dickson explained to her what a singularly lonely, self-sufficing man Peter Reid had been, a man without friends, almost without interests–except the piling up of money.

“I don’t say he was unhappy; I believe he was very content, absolutely absorbed in his game of money-making. But when he couldn’t ignore any longer the fact that there was something wrong with his health, and went to the specialist and was told to give up work at once, he was completely bowled over. Life held nothing more for him. I was very sorry for the poor man … he had only one thought–to go back to Priorsford, his boyhood’s home.”

“And I didn’t know,” said Jean, “or we would all have turned out there and then and sat on our boxes in the middle of the road, or roosted in the trees like crows, rather than keep him for an hour out of his own house. He came and asked to see The Rigs and I was afraid he meant to buy it: it was always our nightmare that the landlord in London would turn us out…. He looked frail and shabby, and I jumped to the conclusion that he was poor. Oh, I do wish I had known….”

“He told me,” Mr. Dickson went on, “when he came to see me on his return, that he had come with the intention of asking the tenants to leave The Rigs, but that he hadn’t the heart to do it when he saw how attached you were to the place. He added that you had been kind to him. He was rather gruff and ashamed about his weakness, but I could see that he had been touched to receive kindness from utter strangers. He was amused in a sardonic way that you had thought him a poor man and had yet been kind to him; he had an unhappy notion that in this world kindness is always bought…. He had no heir, and I think I explained to you in my letter that he had made up his mind to leave his whole fortune to the first person who did anything for him without expecting payment. You turned out to be that person, and I congratulate you, Miss Jardine, most heartily. I would like to tell you that Mr. Reid planned everything so that it would be as easy as possible for you, and asked me to come and see you and explain in person. He seemed very satisfied when all was in order. I saw him a few days before he died and I thought he looked better, and told him so. But he only said, ‘It’s a great load off my mind to get everything settled, and it’s a blessing not to have an heir longing to step into my shoes, and grudging me a few years longer on the earth.’ Two days later he passed away in his sleep. He was a curious, hard man, whom few cared about, but at the end there was something simple and rather pathetic about him. I think he died content.”

“Thank you for telling me about him,” Jean said, and there was silence for a minute.

“And now may I hear your wishes?” said Mr. Dickson.

“Can I do just as I like with the money? Well, will you please divide it into four parts? That will be a quarter for each of us–David, Jock, Mhor, me.”

Jean spoke as if the fortune was a lump of dough and Mr. Dickson the baker, but the lawyer did not smile.

“I understood you had only two brothers?”

“Yes, David and Jock, but Mhor is an adopted brother. His name’s Gervase Taunton.”

“But–has he any claim on you?”

Jean’s face got pink. “I should think he has. He’s _exactly_ like our own brother.”

“Then you want him to have a full share?”

“Of course. It’s odd how people will assume one is a cad! When Mhor’s mother died (his father had died before) he came to us–his mother _trusted him_ to us–and people kept saying, ‘Why should you take him? He has no claim on you.’ As if Mhor wasn’t the best gift we ever got…. And when you have divided it, I wonder if you would take a tenth off each share? We were brought up to give a tenth of any money we had to God. I’m almost sure the boys would give it themselves. I _think_ they would, but perhaps it would be safer to take it off first and put it aside.”

Jean looked very straight at the lawyer. “I wouldn’t like any of us to be unjust stewards,” she said.

“No,” said the lawyer–“no.”

“And perhaps,” Jean went on, “the boys had better not get their shares until they are twenty-five David could have it now, so far as sense goes, but it’s the responsibility I’m thinking about.”

“I would certainly let them wait until they are twenty-five. Their shares will accumulate, of course, and be very much larger when they get them.”

“But I don’t want that,” said Jean. “I want the interest on the money to be added to the tenths that are laid away. It’s better to give more than the strict tenth. It’s so horrid to be shabby about giving.”

“And what are the ‘tenths,’ to be used for?”

“I’ll tell you about that later, if I may. I’m not quite sure myself. I shall have to ask Mr. Macdonald, our minister. He’ll know. I’m never quite certain whether the Bible means the tenth to be given in charity, or kept entirely for churches and missions…. And I want to buy some annuities, if you will tell me how to do it. Mrs. M’Cosh, our servant–perhaps you noticed her when you came in? I want to make her absolutely secure and comfortable in her old age. I hope she will stay with us for a long time yet, but it will be nice for her to feel that she can have a home of her own whenever she likes. And there are others … but I won’t worry you with them just now. It was most awfully kind of you to come all the way from London to explain things to me, when you must be very busy.”

“Coming to see you is part of my business,” Mr. Dickson explained, “but it has been a great pleasure too…. By the way, will you use the house in Prince’s Gate or shall we let it?”

“Oh, do anything you like with it. I shouldn’t think we would ever want to live in London, it’s such a noisy, overcrowded place, and there are always hotels…. I’m quite content with The Rigs. It’s such a comfort to feel that it is our own.”

“It’s a charming cottage,” Mr. Dickson said, “but won’t you want something roomier? Something more imposing for an heiress?”

“I hate imposing things,” Jean said, very earnestly “I want to go on just as we were doing, only with no scrimping, and more treats for the boys. We’ve only got L350 a year now, and the thought of all this money dazes me. It doesn’t really mean anything to me yet.”

“It will soon. I hope your fortune is going to bring you much happiness, though I doubt if you will keep much of it to yourself.”

“Oh yes,” Jean assured him. “I’m going to buy myself a musquash coat with a skunk collar. I’ve always wanted one frightfully. You’ll stay and have luncheon with us, won’t you?”

Mr. Dickson stayed to luncheon, and was treated with great respect by Jock and Mhor. The latter had a notion that somewhere the lawyer had a cave in which he kept Jean’s fortune, great casks of gold pieces and trunks of precious stones, and that any lack of manners on his part might lose Jean her inheritance. He was disappointed to find him dressed like any ordinary man. He had had a dim hope that he would look like Ali Baba and wear a turban.

After Mr. Dickson had finished saying all he had come to say, and had gone to catch his train, Jean started out to call on her minister. Pamela met her at the gate.

“Well, Jean, and whither away? You look very grave. Are you going to tell the King the sky’s falling?”

“Something of that kind. I’m going to see Mr. Macdonald. I’ve got something I want to ask him.”

“I suppose you don’t want me to go with you? I love an excuse to go and see the Macdonalds. Oh, but I have one. Just wait a moment, Jean, while I run back and fetch something.”

She joined Jean after a short delay, and they walked on together. Jean explained that she was going to ask Mr. Macdonald’s advice how best to use her money.

“Has the lawyer been?” Pamela asked, “Do you understand about things?”

Jean told of Mr. Dickson’s visit.

“It’s a fearful lot of money, Pamela. But when it’s divided into four, that’s four people to share the responsibility.”

“And what are you going to do with your share?”

“I’ll tell you what I’m not going to do. I’m not going to take a house and fill it with guests who will be consistently unpleasant, as the Benefactress did. And I’m not going to build a sort of fairy palace and commit suicide from the roof like the millionaire in that book _Midas_ something or other. And I _hope_ I’m not going to lose my imagination and forget what it feels like to be poor, and send a girl with a small dress allowance half a dozen muslin handkerchiefs at Christmas.”

“I suppose you know, Jean–I don’t want to be discouraging–that you will get very little gratitude, that the people you try to help will smarm to your face and blackguard you behind your back? You will be hurt and disappointed times without number…. You see, my dear, I’ve had money for quite a lot of years, and I know.”

Jean nodded.

They were crossing the wide bridge over Tweed and she stopped and, leaning her arms on the parapet, gazed up at Peel Tower.

“Let’s look at Peel for a little,” she said. “It’s been there such a long time and must have seen so many people trying to do their best and only succeeding in making mischief. It seems to say, ‘Nothing really matters: you’ll all be in the tod’s hole in less than a hundred years. I remain, and the river and the hills.'”

“Yes,” said Pamela, “they are a great comfort, the unchanging things–these placid round-backed hills, and the river and the grey town–to us restless mortals…. Look, Jean, I want you to tell me if you think this miniature is at all like Duncan Macdonald. You remember I asked you to let me have that snapshot of him that you said was so characteristic and I sent it to London to a woman I know who does miniatures well. I thought his mother would like to have it. But you must tell me if you think it good enough.”

Jean took the miniature and looked at the pictured face, a laughing boy’s face, fresh-coloured, frank, with flaxen hair falling over a broad brow.

When, after a minute, she handed it back she assured Pamela that the likeness was wonderful.

“She has caught it exactly, that look in his eyes as if he were telling you it was ‘fair time of day’ with him. Oh, dear Duncan! It’s fair time of day with him now, I am sure, wherever he is…. He was twenty-two when he fell three years ago…. You’ve often heard Mrs. Macdonald speak of her sons. Duncan was the youngest by a lot of years–the baby. The others are frighteningly clever, but Duncan was a lamb. They all adored him, but he wasn’t spoiled…. Life was such a joke to Duncan. I can’t even now think of him as dead. He was so full of abounding life one can’t imagine him lying still–quenched. You know that odd little poem:

“‘And Mary’s the one that never liked angel stories, And Mary’s the one that’s dead….’

Death and Duncan seem such a long way apart. Many people are so dull and apathetic that they never seem more than half alive, so they don’t leave much of a gap when they go. But Duncan–The Macdonalds are brave, but I think living to them is just a matter of getting through now. The end of the day will mean Duncan. I am glad you thought about getting the miniature done. You do have such nice thoughts, Pamela.”

The Macdonalds’ manse stood on the banks of Tweed, a hundred yards or so below Peel Tower, a square house of grey stone in a charming garden.

Mr. Macdonald loved his garden and worked in it diligently. It was his doctor, he said. When his mind got stale and sermon-writing difficult, when his head ached and people became a burden, he put on an old coat and went out to dig, or plant or mow the grass. He grew wonderful flowers, and in July, when his lupins were at their best, he took a particular pleasure in enticing people out to see the effect of their royal blue against the silver of Tweed.

He had been a minister in Priorsford for close on forty years and had never had more than L250 of a salary, and on this he and his wife had brought up four sons who looked, as an old woman in the church said, “as if they’d aye got their meat.” There had always been a spare place at every meal for any casual guest, and a spare bedroom looking over Tweed that was seldom empty. And there had been no lowering of the dignity of a manse. A fresh, wise-like, middle-aged woman opened the door to visitors, and if you had asked her she would have told you she had been in service with the Macdonalds since she was fifteen, and Mrs. Macdonald would have added that she never could have managed without Agnes.

The sons had worked their way with bursaries and scholarships through school and college, and now three of them were in positions of trust in the government of their country. One was in London, two in India–and Duncan lay in France, that Holy Land of our people.

It was a nice question his wife used to say before the War (when hearts were lighter and laughter easier) whether Mr. Macdonald was prouder of his sons or his flowers, and when, as sometimes happened he had them all with him in the garden, his cup of content had been full.

And now it seemed to him that when he was in the garden Duncan was nearer him. He could see the little figure in a blue jersey marching along the paths with a wheelbarrow, very important because he was helping his father. He had called the big clump of azaleas “the burning bush.” … He had always been a funny little chap.

And it was in the garden that he had said good-bye to him that last time. He had been twice wounded, and it was hard to go back again. There was no novelty about it now, no eagerness or burning zeal, nothing but a dogged determination to see the thing through. They had stood together looking over Tweed to the blue ridge of Cademuir and Duncan had broken the silence with a question:

“What’s the psalm, Father, about the man ‘who going forth doth mourn’?”

And with his eyes fixed on the hills the old minister had repeated:

“‘That man who bearing precious seed In going forth doth mourn,
He, doubtless, bringing back the sheaves Rejoicing will return.'”

And Duncan had nodded his head and said, “That’s it. ‘Rejoicing will return.'” And he had taken another long look at Cademuir.

Many wondered what had kept such a man as John Macdonald all his life in a small town like Priorsford. He did more good, he said, in a little place; he would be of no use in a city; but the real reason was he knew his health would not stand the strain. For many years he had been a martyr to a particularly painful kind of rheumatism. He never spoke of it if he could help it, and tried never to let it interfere with his work, but his eyes had the patient look that suffering brings, and his face often wore a twisted, humorous smile, as if he were laughing at his own pain. He was now sixty-four. His sons, so far as they were allowed, had smoothed the way for their parents, but they could not induce their father to retire from the ministry. “I’ll give up when I begin to feel myself a nuisance,” he would say. “I can still preach and visit my people, and perhaps God will let me die in harness, with the sound of Tweed in my ears.”

Mrs. Macdonald was, in Bible words, a “succourer of many.” She was a little stout woman with the merry heart that goes all the way, combined with heavy-lidded, sad eyes, and a habit of sighing deeply. She affected to take a sad view of everything, breaking into irrepressible laughter in the middle of the most pessimistic utterances, for she was able to see the humorous side of her own gloom. Mrs. Macdonald was a born giver; everything she possessed she had to share. She was miserable if she had nothing to bestow on a parting guest, small gifts like a few new-laid eggs or a pot of home-made jam.

“You know yourself,” she would say, “what a satisfied feeling it gives you to come away from a place with even the tiniest gift.”

Her popularity was immense. Sad people came to her because she sighed with them and never tried to cheer them; dull people came to her because she was never in offensive high spirits or in a boastful mood–not even when her sons had done something particularly striking–and happy people came to her, for, though she sighed and warned them that nothing lasted in this world, her eyes shone with pleasure, and her interest was so keen that every detail could be told and discussed and gloated over with the comfortable knowledge that Mrs. Macdonald would not say to her next visitor that she had been simply _deaved_ with talk about So-and-so’s engagement.

Mrs. Macdonald believed in speaking her mind–if she had anything pleasant to say, and she was sometimes rather startling in her frankness to strangers. “My dear, how pretty you are,” she would say to a girl visitor, or, “Forgive me, but I must tell you I don’t think I ever saw a nicer hat.”

The women in the congregation had no comfort in their new clothes until Mrs. Macdonald had pronounced on them. A word was enough. Perhaps at the church door some congregational matter would be discussed; then, at parting, a quick touch on the arm and–“Most successful bonnet I ever saw you get,” or, “The coat’s worth all the money,” or, “Everything new, and you look as young as your daughter.”

Pamela and Jean found the minister and his wife in the garden. Mr. Macdonald was pacing up and down the path overlooking the river, with his next Sunday’s sermon in his hand, while Mrs. Macdonald raked the gravel before the front door (she liked the place kept so tidy that her sons had been wont to say bitterly, as they spent an hour of their precious Saturdays helping, that she dusted the branches and wiped the faces of the flowers with a handkerchief) and carried on a conversation with her husband which was of little profit, as the rake on the stones dimmed the sense of her words.

“Wasn’t that right, John?” she was saying as her husband came near her.

“Dear me, woman, how can I tell? I haven’t heard a word you’ve been saying. Here are callers. I’ll get away to my visiting. Why! It’s Jean and Miss Reston–this is very pleasant.”

Mrs. Macdonald waved her hand to her visitors as she hurried away to put the rake in the shed, reappearing in a moment like a stout little whirlwind.

“Come away, my dears. Up to the study, Jean; that’s where the fire is to-day. I’m delighted to see you both. What a blessing Agnes is baking pancakes It seemed almost a waste, for neither John nor I eat them, but, you see, they had just been meant for you…. I wouldn’t go just now, John. We’ll have an early tea and that will give you a long evening.”

Jean explained that she specially wanted to see Mr. Macdonald.

“And would you like me to go away?” Mrs. Macdonald asked. “Miss Reston and I can go to the dining-room.”

“But I want you as much as Mr. Macdonald,” said Jean. “It’s your advice I want–about the money, you know.”

Mrs. Macdonald gave a deep sigh. “Ah, money,” she said–“the root of all evil.”

“Not at all, my dear,” her husband corrected. “The love of money is the root of all evil–a very different thing. Money can be a very fine thing.”

“Oh,” said Jean, “that’s what I want you to tell me. How can I make this money a blessing?”

Mr. Macdonald gave his twisted smile.

“And am I to answer you in one word, Jean? I fear it’s a word too wide for a mouth of this age’s size. You will have to make mistakes and learn by them and gradually feel your way.”

“The most depressing thing about money,” put in his wife, “is that the Bible should say so definitely that a rich man can hardly get into heaven. Oh, I know all about a needle’s eye being a gate, but I’ve always a picture in my own mind of a camel and an ordinary darning-needle, and anything more hopeless could hardly be imagined.”

Mrs. Macdonald had taken up a half-finished sock, and, as she disposed of the chances of all the unfortunate owners of wealth, she briskly turned the heel. Jean knew her hostess too well to be depressed by her, so she smiled at the minister, who said, “Heaven’s gate is too narrow for a man and his money; that goes without saying, Jean.”

Jean leant forward and said eagerly, “What I really want to know is about the tenth we are to put away as not being our own. Does it count if it is given in charity, or ought it to be given to Church things and missions?”

“Whatever is given to God will ‘count,’ as you put it–lighting, where you can, candles of kindness to cheer and warm and lighten.”

“I see,” said Jean. “Of course, there are heaps of things one could slump money away on, hospitals and institutions and missions, but these are all so impersonal. I wonder, would it be pushing and _furritsome_, do you think, if I tried to help ministers a little?–ministers, I mean, with wives and families and small incomes shut away in country places and in the poor parts of big towns? It would be such pleasant helping to me.”

“Now,” said Mrs. Macdonald, “that’s a really sensible idea, Jean. There’s no manner of doubt that the small salaries of the clergy are a crying scandal. I don’t like ministers to wail in the papers about it, but the laymen should wail until things are changed. Ministers don’t enter the Church for the loaves and fishes, but the labourer is worthy of his hire, and they must have enough to live on decently. Living has doubled. I couldn’t manage as things are now, and I’m a good manager, though I says it as shouldn’t…. The fight I’ve had all my life nobody will ever know. Now that we have plenty, I can talk about it. I never hinted it to anybody when we were struggling through; indeed, we washed our faces and anointed our heads and appeared not unto men to fast! The clothes and the boots and the butcher’s bills! It’s pleasant to think of now, just as it’s pleasant to look from the hilltop at the steep road you’ve come. The boys sometimes tell me that they are glad we were too poor to have a nurse, for it meant that they were brought up with their father and me. We had our meals together, and their father helped them with their lessons. Indeed, it’s only now I realise how happy I was to have them all under one roof.”

She stopped and sighed, and went on again with a laugh. “I remember one time a week before the Sustentation Fund was due, I was down to one six-pence And of course a collector arrived! D’you remember that, John?… And the boys worked so hard to educate themselves. All except Duncan. Oh, but I am glad that my little laddie had an easy time–when it was to be such a short one.”

“He always wanted to be a soldier,” Mr. Macdonald said. “You remember, Anne, when you tried to get him to say he would be a minister? He was about six then, I think. He said, ‘No, it’s not a white man’s job,’ and then looked at me apologetically afraid that he had hurt my feelings. When the War came he went ‘most jocund, apt, and willingly,’ but without any ill-will in his heart to the Germans.

“‘He left no will but good will
And that to all mankind….'”

Mrs. Macdonald stared into the fire with tear-blurred eyes and said: “I sometimes wonder if they died in vain. If this is the new world it’s a far worse one than the old. Class hatred, discontent, wild extravagance in some places, children starving in others, women mad for pleasure, and the dead forgotten already except by the mothers–the mothers who never to their dying day will see a fresh-faced boy without a sword piercing their hearts and a cry rising to their lips, ‘My son! My son!'”

“It’s all true, Anne,” said her husband, “but the sacrifice of love and innocence can never be in vain. Nothing can ever dim that sacrifice. The country’s dead will save the country as they saved it before. Those young lives have gone in front to light the way for us.”

Mrs. Macdonald took up her sock again with a long sigh.

“I wish I could comfort myself with thoughts as you can, John, but I never had any mind. No, Jean, you needn’t protest so politely. I’m a good house-wife and I admit my shortbread is ‘extra,’ as Duncan used to say. Duncan was very sorry as a small boy that he had left heaven and come to stay with us. He used to say with a sigh, ‘You see, heaven’s extra.’ I don’t know where he picked up the expression. But what I was going to say is that people are so wretchedly provoking. This morning I was really badly provoked. For one thing, I was very busy doing the accounts of the Girls’ Club (you know I have no head for figures), and Mrs. Morton strolled in to see me, to cheer me up, she said. Cheer me up! She maddened me. I haven’t been forty years a minister’s wife without learning patience, but it would have done me all the good in the world to take that woman by her expensive fur coat and walk her rapidly out of the room. She sat there breathing opulence, and told me how hard it was for her to live–she, a lone woman with six servants to wait on her and a car and a chauffeur! ‘I am not going to give to this War Memorial,’ she said. ‘At this time it seems rather a wasteful proceeding, and it won’t do the men who have fallen any good.’ … I could have told her that surely it wasn’t _waste_ the men were thinking about when they poured out their youth like wine that she and her like might live and hug their bank books.”

Mr. Macdonald had moved from his chair in the window, and now stood with one hand on the mantelshelf looking into the fire. “Do you remember,” he said, “that evening in Bethany when Mary took a box of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, so that the odour of the ointment filled the house? Judas–that same Judas who carried the bag and was a robber–was much concerned about the waste. He said that the box might have been sold for three hundred pence and given to the poor. And Jesus, rebuking him, said, ‘The poor always ye have with you, but Me ye have not always.'”

He stopped abruptly and went over to his writing-table and made as though he were arranging papers. Presently he said, “Anne, you’ve been here.” His tone was accusing.

“Only writing a post card,” said his wife quickly. “I can’t have made much of a mess.” She turned to her visitors and explained: “John is a regular old maid about his writing-table; everything must be so tidy and unspotted.”

“Well, I can’t understand,” said her husband, “why anyone so neat handed as you are should be such a filthy creature with ink. You seem positively to sling it about.”

“Well,” said Mrs. Macdonald, changing the subject “I like your idea of helping ministers, Jean. I’ve often thought if I had the means I would know how to help. A cheque to a minister in a city-charge for a holiday; a cheque to pay a doctor’s bill and ease things a little for a worn-out wife. You’ve a great chance, Jean.”

“I know,” said Jean, “if you will only tell me how to begin.”

“I’ll soon do that,” said practical Mrs. Macdonald “I’ve got several in my mind this moment that I just ache to give a hand to. But only the very rich can help. You can’t in decency take from people who have only enough to go on with…. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll see if Agnes is getting the tea. I want you to taste my rowan and crab-apple jelly, Miss Reston, and if you like it you will take some home with you.”

* * * * *

As they left the Manse an hour later, laden with gifts, Pamela said to Jean, “I would rather be Mrs. Macdonald than anyone else I know. She is a practising Christian. If I had done a day’s work such as she has done I think I would go out of the world pretty well pleased with myself.”

“Yes,” Jean agreed. “If life is merely a chance of gaining love she will come out with high marks. Did you give her the miniature?”

“Yes, just as we left, when you had walked on to the gate with Mr. Macdonald. She was so absurdly grateful she made me cry. You would have thought no one had ever given her a gift before.”

“The world,” said Jean, “is divided into two classes, the givers and the takers. Nothing so touches and pleases and surprises a ‘giver’ as to receive a gift. The ‘takers’ are too busy standing on their hind legs (like Peter at tea-time) looking wistfully for the next bit of cake to be very appreciative of the biscuit of the moment.”

“Bless me!” said Pamela, “Jean among the cynics!”

CHAPTER XXI

“The soul’s dark cottage, batter’d and decay’d, Lets in the light through chinks that time has made: Stronger by weakness wiser men become
As they draw near to their eternal home: Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view That stand upon the threshold of the new.”

EDMUND WALLER.

One day Pamela walked down to Hopetoun to lunch with Mrs. Hope. Augusta had gone away on a short visit and Pamela had promised to spend as much time as possible with her mother.

“You won’t be here much longer,” Mrs. Hope had said, “so spend as much time with me as you can spare, and we’ll talk books and quote poetry, and,” she had finished defiantly, “I’ll miscall my neighbours if I feel inclined.”

It was February now, and there was a hint of spring in the air. The sun was shining as if trying to make up for the days it had missed, the green shoots were pushing daringly forth, and a mavis in a holly-bush was chirping loudly and cheerfully. To-morrow they might be plunged back into winter, the green things nipped and discouraged, the birds silent–but to-day it was spring.

Pamela lingered by Tweedside listening to the mavis, looking back at the bridge spanning the river, the church steeple high against the pale blue sky, the little town pouring its houses down to the water’s edge. Hopetoun Woods were still bare and brown, but soon the larches would get their pencils, the beeches would unfurl tiny leaves of living green, and the celandines begin to poke their yellow heads through the carpet of last year’s leaves.

Mrs. Hope was sitting close to the window that looked out on the Hopetoun Woods. The spring sunshine and the notes of the mavis had brought to her a rush of memories.

“For what can spring renew
More fiercely for us than the need of you.”

Her knitting lay on her lap, a pile of new books stood on the table beside her, but her hands were idly folded, and she did not look at the books, did not even notice the sunshine; her eyes were with her heart, and that was far away across the black dividing sea in the last resting-places of her three sons. Wild laddies they had been, never at rest, never out of mischief, and now–“a’ quaitit noo in the grave.”

She turned to greet her visitor with her usual whimsical smile. She had grown very fond of Pamela; they were absolutely at ease with each other, and could enjoy talking, or sitting together in silence.

To-day the conversation was brisk between the two at luncheon. Pamela