sweet scent stole out. What had Alastair said, “Soft and warm and nice-smelling.” She supposed many people considered it worth while to do everything in their power to make themselves and their surroundings attractive, but in this fleeting world was it not a waste of time? So soon we would all be done with it. A few more years shall roll. . . . She wondered if Nicole and her mother, among their pretty things, ever thought of another world, and of the importance of working while it was day. The shadow of the night that was coming had always lain dark across Janet’s day of life.
The sound of voices disturbed her train of thought. Looking out of the window she saw her neighbour, Mr. Beckett, standing on the gravel holding a large box, while his dog, James, leapt on him, and Alastair ran about giving excited yelps. Janet felt almost ashamed of herself for noticing how good the young man was to look at standing there in his light tweed jacket and knickerbockers. He was bare-headed, and the winter sun turned his fair hair to gold.
“Ask your aunt if you may come in with me next door. My room’s the best place to fix it up in,” she heard him say, and went quickly downstairs to the front door.
“It’s a train,” Alastair shouted, roused completely out of his habitual gravity, “a train for me! May I go with Mr. Beckett and see how it works?”
Janet met the eyes of the tall young man, who smiled boyishly as if he were as keen on the game as his small companion, and she found herself telling him, with quite a warm inflection in her usually so colourless voice, how good he was to trouble about her nephew, and she hoped Alastair was as grateful as he ought to be.
Alastair, in no mood to study inflections in his aunt’s voice, tugged at his friend’s arm, saying, “Come on, then, oh, do come on,” but Simon felt compelled to suggest that perhaps Miss Symington would accompany them to see the train work.
Alastair’s face was anxious until he heard his aunt decline, graciously, the invitation. She added that Annie would call for him at eleven o’clock to take him to the Harbour House, and, about twelve, he was going to the Lambert’s.
“My word, Bat, you’re having a day,” Simon told him.
“I’m afraid he will be spoiled among so many kind people,” Janet said primly.
“Come on, oh, do come on,” Alastair insisted, jigging up and down impatiently, feeling that all this talk was quite beside the mark; so Simon, with a smile to Miss Symington, allowed himself to be led away.
* * * * *
Evening had fallen on another Christmas Day. Everywhere tired children were being put to bed, some cross, some dissatisfied, all, more or less, suffering from over-eating. It is doubtful whether the long-looked-for day ever does come up to expectations, but no matter how disillusioned they go to bed, in the morning they are already beginning again to look forward to that bright day which lies at the end of the long year ahead.
The Rutherfurds, having long since put away childish things and having no expectations of extra happiness but rather the reverse, had been surprised to find themselves thoroughly enjoying their first Christmas in Kirkmeikle. Alastair and the postman had taken up the morning, after luncheon they had, all three, walked round the links, and finished up at the Lambert’s garden-enclosed house, which was full of all happy cheerful things, toys and children’s voices, music and firelight. Mr. Lambert had told a wonderful story of pirates in Kirkmeikle, with Alastair as hero, and they had played games and sung carols.
Now dinner was over, and they were sitting round the fire in the long drawing-room, drinking their coffee, Lady Jane in her own low chair, Nicole beside her on a wooden stool with a red damask cushion, Barbara on the sofa, and Simon Beckett comfortable in a capacious arm-chair.
Barbara wore a dress the colour of Parma violets, Nicole was in white, with a spray of scarlet berries tucked into the white fur which trimmed it.
They had been talking animatedly, but now a silence had fallen. So quiet was the room that outside the tide could be heard rippling over the sand. A boy passed whistling some popular song, a gay tune with an undertone of sadness.
After a minute, “Well,” said Lady Jane, “what are we going to do to amuse our guest?”
“Let’s play at something,” Nicole suggested.
“But what?” asked Barbara.
“Oh, anything,” Nicole said lazily. “Just let’s make up a game! Suppose we each tell what strikes us as the funniest thing we know.”
“The best joke, do you mean?” Simon asked.
“The best joke, or story, or episode in a play, or something that happened to yourself. The thing that has remained in your memory as being really funny.”
“Far too difficult,” Barbara declared. “I laugh and forget.”
“And I,” said her aunt, “have such a primitive sense of humour that it’s the most obvious joke that makes me laugh: to see somebody fall over a pail of water convulses me. But I never can remember good stories, can you, Mr. Beckett?”
“I seldom remember them at the right moment,” Simon confessed.
“I’m glad of that,” Barbara said, getting out her work. “I do think those people are a bore who are constantly saying, ‘That reminds me of a story. . . .’ ”
“I think you’re all very stupid,” Nicole said.
“But I do remember one thing, Miss Nicole,” Simon said, “one of A. A. M.’s Punch articles on how to dispose of safety-razor blades. The man had been in the habit of dropping worn-out blades on the floor, and his wife protested that the housemaid cut her fingers and dropped blood on the blue carpet. ‘Then,’ said the husband, ‘we’ll either have to get a red carpet or a blue-blooded housemaid. . . .’ I always think of that when it comes to discarding a razor-blade, and laugh! What is your funniest thing?”
“I was trying to think,” Nicole said, hugging her knees, “but everything has gone out of my mind. There’s one story that always cheers me about Braxfield, the hanging judge; I think it was Braxfield, but it doesn’t matter anyway. He was crossing a burn in spate, and by some mischance his wig fell off. His servant fished it out and handed it to him, but the judge refused it, petulantly remarking that it wasn’t his. ‘A weel,’ said his servant, ‘there’s nae wale o’ wigs in this burn.’ Don’t you think that’s a good story?”
“Very,” said Simon, collecting the coffee cups and putting them on a table. “What does ‘wale’ mean?”
Nicole dropped her head in her hands. “To think that I’ve been trying to tell a Scot’s story to a Sassenach! ‘Wale’ means choice. It’s the cold sense of the answer that makes the story seem so good to me. I thought you looked a little blank. Like the Englishmen dining at some inn and waited on by a new recruit of a waiter. They were waiting for the sweets, when he rushed in and said: ‘The pudden’s scail’t. It was curds, and it played jap ower the dish and syne skited doon the stairs.’ The poor dears realised that they were to get no pudding, but they never fathomed why.”
“I don’t suppose,” Lady Jane said to her guest, “that you understood a word of that? I know it was Greek to me when I came first to Scotland. . . . I wish you’d tell me about your writing. How, exactly, do you proceed?”
“Oh, well,” Simon said, lighting a
