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
