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
