ae son leevin’—an’ he’s mairrit.”
“Oh—but he’s good to you, I hope.”
“As guid as his wife’ll let him be. O, ma guid-dochter’s a grand gear-gatherer. She was a Speedie, and they’re a’ hard. She’s big an’ heavy-fitted like her faither. Handsome some folk ca’ her! Handsome, says I, haud yer tongue! But I’m no’ sayin’ nae ill o’ her, ye ken. She’s welcome to a’ she can get. I never grudged naebody naething their guid wasna’ ma ill.”
“Well,” Lady Jane rose to go, “I hope you’ll let us come again. I want to talk to you about home. . . . Don’t get up. I’m afraid you’ve bad rheumatism?”
“Ay, it cam’ on me aboot five years syne. I was as soople as an eel till then. . . . Hoo’s Agnes Martin pleasin’ ye?”
“Oh, she’s a treasure. And I hope she’s happy with us.”
“Happy eneuch, I daursay. She’s the sense to bow to the bush that gie’s her bield,” and Betsy lowered herself slowly into her chair, while her visitors went down the stairs feeling rather snubbed.
CHAPTER XI
“This for remembrance.”
Hamlet.
Though Barbara had professed herself unable to endure the boredom of calling on her new neighbours, she greeted her aunt and cousin with interest on their return.
“Well,” she said, as she roused the fire to a blaze, and lit the wick under the lamp for the teapot, “how have you fared, intrepid spirits?”
Lady Jane had left her coat in the hall and stood, looking absurdly girlish in her straight black dress, her bright hair escaping from under the close-fitting hat, warming her hands at the fire.
“We’ve done a good afternoon’s work,” she said, smiling at Barbara, “and enjoyed it.”
“You haven’t had tea, I hope? for Mrs. Martin has baked a very special cake—a reward for well-doing, I suppose.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” said Nicole; “I’m hungry. Mrs. Heggie wanted to give us tea, but Mrs. Buckler didn’t offer because of a disobliging maid. Wasn’t it luck we got three out of the four at home?”
“You call it luck?” Barbara said.
“And,” continued Nicole, “we’ve put our first foot in the morass of invitations you dreaded so. Miss Symington brings her nephew to tea on Wednesday.”
Barbara groaned. “I knew it! The thin end of the wedge. . . . What are they like, Aunt Jane? I want your unbiassed opinion and not a rose-tinted appreciation from Nikky.”
Lady Jane sipped her tea contemplatively for a minute, then said:
“Nice people, I think. We called first at the three large villas. Miss Symington’s is most depressingly bleak and ugly, but Miss Symington herself seems a quiet inoffensive woman. Almost entirely silent, though. Nicole and I had to talk all the time to avoid embarrassing pauses. Some people seem to feel no responsibility about keeping up a conversation. I wonder if it is shyness——”
“Sheer laziness,” said Nicole. “I’m sure I’d much rather be silent; it would be easier than keeping up a bright vivacious flow of talk.”
Her mother laughed sceptically and went on. “Then we went to Knebworth, a type of modern villa that is all right in London suburbs but should never be seen in Scotland. The bleak Ravenscraig goes better with the East wind and the sea birds and the high sharp voices of the people—— But it was comfortable and, in a way, pretty, with its absurd ingleneuks and latticed windows, and Mrs. Heggie herself is a character. She is one of the people who help to make the world go round. She lifts, and doesn’t merely lean. You couldn’t please her better than by using her. But she’s lost in a place like this, her energies need freer scope.”
Nicole nodded. “Not only a good sort, but an amusing good sort. She reminded me a little of Mrs. Jackson. . . . To-day I felt she was constrained, and we were strangers, but I should like to be there when she really lets herself go. . . . I wonder what the daughter is like. I expect the books were hers. Evidently a modern young woman, an admirer of the latest lights. I don’t think, somehow, I’ll ask her to come and read Scott’s Journal with me.”
“The third house,” said Lady Jane, “is called Lucknow, and appropriately enough shelters an Anglo-Indian family. . . .”
“Ah, but, Mother,” Nicole broke in, “don’t lay that to their charge. It was christened before they took it—Mr. Buckler told me.”
“What are the Anglo-Indians like?” Barbara asked.
“Well, there’s always something rather pathetic about retired Anglo-Indians. I know it’s great impertinence to find people pathetic who in no way desire sympathy, but it must be such a change to come back from an important position with ‘a’ thing braw aboot ye,’ to live an unoccupied life in an ugly little villa, among people who take no interest in the thirty years you have given to the Empire, and don’t want to hear anything about the things that have been more than life to you. Mrs. Buckler is a nice woman and not nearly so discontented as she might be. She takes her servant troubles humorously, and she’s proud of her children.”
“Why, Mums, have they children? They struck me as being distinctly childless. I’m glad they have. . . . I liked Mr. Buckler so much. And, Babs, we met the young man I told you of the other day, and—wasn’t it silly?—I clean forgot to ask any one if he really is the Everest man.”
“But,” said Barbara, “you haven’t called on the whole population of Kirkmeikle? There are others, surely.”
“We called at the Manse but Mrs. Lambert wasn’t at home, but we didn’t reach the Kilgours.”
“I must say they sound a dull lot,” Barbara said as she poured out tea.
“They’re not exciting, perhaps,” Nicole confessed. “But, Babs, I want you to come and see an old woman—Betsy something, who comes from Langhope. To hear her speak was like a drink of water in a thirsty land. . . .”
Nicole took a bun and her cup of tea and went and curled herself into one of the window-seats. She liked peering out at the Harbour in the dusk, watching the lights along the shore come out one by one.
“I wonder,” she said in a little, “how the Jacksons are getting on. Jean Douglas has never said she has called.”
“Too busy, I expect. By the way, Christmas isn’t very far away. What are we going to do about it this year?”
Nicole smiled lazily at her cousin. “Need we do anything about it? Are ‘the last sad squires’ expected to keep Christmas? We’ve shed all our responsibilities, haven’t we? I expect Mrs. Jackson will do great things at Rutherfurd. Do you remember . . .” She stopped realising that to recall other and happier days was not wise.
“I
