door and get a dusty answer. There is the same welcome for everyone, gentle and simple, and always the bright fire, and the kind, smiling faces, and tea with thick cream and cake of the richest and freshest…. You know how some people beg you to visit them, and when you go they seem to wear a surprised look, and you feel unexpected and awkward? The Duncans make you feel so pleased with yourself. They are so unselfishly interested in other people's concerns; and they are grand laughers. Even the dullest warm to something approaching wit when surrounded by that appreciative audience of three. They don't talk much themselves, but they have made of listening a fine art."
"Jean," said Pamela, "do you actually mean to tell me that everybody in Priorsford is nice? Or are you merely being charitable? I don't know anything duller than your charitable person who always says the kind thing."
Jean laughed. "I'm sorry, but I'm afraid the Priorsford people are all more or less nice. At least, they seem so to me, but perhaps I'm not very discriminating. You will tell me what you think of them when you meet them. All these people I've been telling you about are rich people, 'in a large way,' as Priorsford calls it. They have all large motor-cars and hothouses and rich things like that. Mrs. M'Cosh says Priorsford is a 'real tone-y wee place,' and we do fancy ourselves a good deal. It's a community largely made up of women and middle-aged retired men. You see, there is nothing for the young men to do; we haven't even mills like so many of the Tweedside towns."
"Will people call on me?" Pamela asked. "Is Priorsford sociable?"
Jean pursed up her mouth in an effort to look worldly wise. "I think you will find it sociable, but if you had come here obscure and unknown, your existence would never have been heard of, even if you had taken a house and settled down. Priorsford hardly looks over its shoulder at a newcomer. Some of the 'little' people might call and ask you to tea—the kind 'little' people—but——"
"Who do you call the 'little' people?"
"All the people who aren't 'in a large way,' all the dwellers in the snug little villas—most of Priorsford in fact." Jean got up to go. "Dear me, look at the time! The boys will be home from school. May I have the book you spoke of? Priorsford would be enraged if it heard me calmly discussing its faults and foibles." She laughed softly. "Lewis Elliot says Priorsford is made up of three classes—the dull, the daft, and the devout."
Pamela, looking for the book she wanted to lend to Jean, stopped and stood still as if arrested by the name.
"Lewis Elliot!"
"Yes, of Laverlaw. D'you know him, by any chance?"
"I used to know a Lewis Elliot who had some connection with Priorsford, but I thought he had left it years ago."
"Our Lewis Elliot inherited Laverlaw rather unexpectedly some years ago. Before that he was quite poor. Perhaps that is what makes him so understanding. He is a sort of distant cousin of ours. Great-aunt Alison was his aunt too—at least, he called her aunt. It will be fun if he turns out to be the man you used to know."
"Yes," said Pamela. "Here is the book, Jean. It's been so nice having you this afternoon. No, dear, I won't go back with you to tea. I'm going to write letters. Good-bye. My love to the boys."
But Pamela wrote no letters that evening. She sat with a book on her knee and looked into the fire; sometimes she sighed.
CHAPTER VIII
"I have, as you know, a general prejudice against all persons who do not succeed in the world."—Jowett of Balliol.
Mrs. Duff-Whalley was giving a dinner-party. This was no uncommon occurrence, for she loved to entertain. It gave her real pleasure to provide a good meal and to see her guests enjoy it. "Besides," as she often said, "what's the use of having everything solid for the table, and a fine house and a cook at sixty pounds a year, if nobody's any the wiser?"
It will be seen from this remark that Mrs. Duff-Whalley had not always been in a position to give dinner-parties; indeed, Mrs. Hope, that terror to the newly risen, who traced everyone back to their first rude beginnings (generally "a wee shop"), had it that the late Mr. Duff-Whalley had begun life as a "Johnnie-a'-things" in Leith, and that his wife had been his landlady's daughter.
But the "wee shop" was in the dim past, if, indeed, it had ever existed except in Mrs. Hope's wicked, wise old head, and for many years Mrs. Duff-Whalley had ruffled it in a world that asked no questions about the origin of money so obviously there.
Most people are weak when they come in contact with a really strong-willed woman. No one liked Mrs. Duff-Whalley, but few, if any, withstood her advances. It was easier to give in and be on calling and dining terms than to repulse a woman who never noticed a snub, and who would never admit the possibility that she might not be wanted. So Mrs. Duff-Whalley could boast with some degree of truth that she knew "everybody," and entertained at The Towers "very nearly the highest in the land."
The dinner-party I write of was not one of her more ambitious efforts. It was a small and (with the exception of one guest) what she called "a purely local affair." That is to say, the people who were to grace the feast were culled from the big villas on the Hill, and were not "county."
Mrs. Duff-Whalley was an excellent manager, and left nothing to chance. She saw to all the details herself. Dressed and ready quite half an hour before the time fixed for dinner, she had cast her eagle glance over the dinner-table, and now sailed into the drawing-room to see that the fire was at its best, the chairs comfortably disposed, and everything as it should be. Certainly no one could have found fault with the comfort of the room this evening. A huge fire blazed in the most approved style of grate, the electric light (in the latest fittings) also blazed, lighting up the handsome oil-paintings that adorned the walls, the many photographs, the china in the cabinets, the tables with their silver treasures. Everywhere stood vases of heavy-scented hothouse flowers. Mrs. Duff-Whalley approved of hothouse flowers; she said they gave a tone to a room.
The whole room glittered, and its mistress glittered with it as she moved about in a dress largely composed of sequins, a diamond necklace, and a startling ornament in her hair.
She turned as the door opened and her daughter came into the room, and looked her carefully up and down. She was a pretty girl dressed in the extreme of fashion, and under each arm she carried a tiny barking dog.
Muriel was a good daughter to her mother, and an exemplary character in every way, but the odd thing was that few people liked her. This was the more tragic as it was the desire of her heart to be popular. Her appearance was attractive, and strangers usually began acquaintance with enthusiasm, but the attraction rarely survived the first hour's talk. She was like a very well-coloured and delightful-looking apple that is without flavour. She was never natural—always aping someone. Her enthusiasms did not ring true, her interest was obviously feigned, and she had that most destroying of social faults, she could not listen with patience, but let her attention wander to the conversation of her neighbours. It seemed as if she could never talk at peace with anyone for fear of missing something more interesting in another quarter.
"You look very nice, Muriel! I'm glad I told you to put on that dress, and that new way of doing your hair is very becoming." One lovable thing about Mrs. Duff-Whalley was the way she sincerely and openly admired everything that was hers. "Now, see and do your best to make the evening go. Mr. Elliot takes a lot of amusing, and the Jowetts aren't very lively either."
"Is that all that's coming?" Muriel asked.
