She turned to greet her visitor with her usual whimsical smile.  She had grown very fond of Pamela; they were absolutely at ease with each other, and could enjoy talking, or sitting together in silence.

To-day the conversation was brisk between the two at luncheon.  Pamela had been with Jean to Edinburgh and Glasgow on shopping expeditions, and Mrs. Hope was keen to hear all about them.

“I could hardly persuade her to go,” Pamela said.  “Her argument was, ‘Why get clothes from Paris if you can get them in Priorsford?’ She only gave in to please me, but she enjoyed herself mightily.  We went first to Edinburgh—­my first visit except just waiting a train.”

“And weren’t you charmed?  Edinburgh is our own town, and we are inordinately proud of it.  It’s full of steep streets and east winds and high houses, and you can’t move a step without treading on a W.S., but it’s a fine place for all that.”

“It’s a fairy-tale place to see,” Pamela said.  “The castle at sunset, the sudden glimpses of the Forth, Holyrood dreaming in the mist—­these are pictures that will remain with one always.  But Glasgow—­”

“I know almost nothing of Glasgow,” said Mrs. Hope, “but I like the people that come from it.  They are not so devoured by gentility as our Edinburgh friends; they are more living, more human....”

“Are Edinburgh people very refined?”

“Oh, some of them can hardly see out of their eyes for gentility.  I delight in it myself, though I’ve never attained to it.  I’m told you see it in its finest flower in the suburbs.  A friend of mine was going out by train to Colinton, and she overheard two girls talking.  One said, ’I was at a dence lest night.’  The other, rather condescendingly, replied, ‘Oh, really!  And who do you dence with out at Colinton?’ ‘It depends,’ said the first girl.  ’Lest night, for instance, I was up to my neck in advocates.’ ...  Priorsford’s pretty genteel too.  You know the really genteel by the way they say ‘Good-bai.’  The rest of us who pride ourselves on not being provincial say—­you may have noticed—­’Good-ba—­a.’”

Pamela laughed, and said she had noticed the superior accent of Priorsford.

“Jean and I were much interested in the difference between Edinburgh and Glasgow shops.  Not in the things they sell—­the shops in both places are most excellent—­but in the manner of selling.  The girls in the Edinburgh shops are nice and obliging—­the war-time manner doesn’t seem to have reached shop-assistants in Scotland, luckily—­but quite Londonish with their manners and their ‘Moddom.’  In Glasgow, they give one such a feeling of personal interest.  You would really think it mattered to them what you chose.  They delighted Jean by remarking as she tried on a hat, ‘My, you look a treat in that!’ We bought a great deal more than we needed, for we hadn’t the heart to refuse what was brought with such enthusiasm.  ’I don’t know what it is about that hat, but it’s awful nice somehow Distinctive, if you know what I mean.  I think when you get it home you’ll like it awful well—­’ Who would refuse a hat after such a recommendation?”