“You will like to come to Mintern Abbas, won’t you, Mhor?” she said.

Mhor considered.

“I would have liked it better,” he confessed, “if there had been a railway line quite near.  It was silly of whoever built it to put it so far away.”

“When Mintern Abbas was built railways hadn’t been invented.”

“I’m glad I wasn’t invented before railways,” said Mhor.  “I would have been very dull.”

“You’ll have a pony at Mintern Abbas.  Won’t that be nice?”

“Yes.  Oh! there’s the signal down at last.  That’ll be the express to London.  I can hear the roar of it already.”

Pamela’s idea of a wedding garment for Jean was a soft white cloth coat and skirt, and a close-fitting hat with Mercury wings.  Everything was simple, but everything was exquisitely fresh and dainty.

Pamela dressed her, Mrs. Macdonald looking on, and Mawson fluttering about, admiring but incompetent.

  “’Something old and something new,
    Something borrowed and something blue,’”

Mrs. Macdonald quoted.  “Have you got them all, Jean?”

“I think so.  I’ve got a lace handkerchief that was my mother’s—­that’s old.  And blue ribbon in my under-things.  And I’ve borrowed Pamela’s prayer-book, for I haven’t one of my own.  And all the rest of me’s new.”

“And the sun is shining,” said Pamela, “so you’re fortified against ill-luck.”

“I hope so,” said Jean gravely.  “I must see if Mhor has washed his face this morning.  I didn’t notice at breakfast, and he’s such an odd child, he’ll wash every bit of himself and neglect his face.  Perhaps you’ll remember to look, Mrs. Macdonald, when you are with him here.”

Mrs. Macdonald smiled at Jean’s maternal tone.

“I’ve brought up four boys,” she said, “so I ought to know something of their ways.  It will be like old times to have Jock and Mhor to look after.”

Mhor went in the car with Jean and Pamela and Mrs. Macdonald.  The others had gone on in Lord Bidborough’s car, as Mr. Macdonald wanted to see the vicar before the service.  The vicar had asked Jean about the music, saying that the village schoolmistress who was also the organist, was willing to play.  “I don’t much like ’The Voice that breathed o’er Eden,’” Jean told him, “but anything else would be very nice.  It is so very kind of her to play.”

Mhor mourned all the way to church about Peter being left behind.  “There’s poor Peter who is so fond of marriages—­he goes to them all in Priorsford—­tied up in the yard; and he knows how to behave in a church.”

“It’s a good deal more than you do,” Mrs. Macdonald told him.  “You’re never still for one moment.  I know of at least one person who has had to change his seat because of you.  He said he got no good of the sermon watching you bobbing about.”

“It’s because I don’t care about sermons,” Mhor replied, and relapsed into dignified silence—­a silence sweetened by a large chocolate poked at him by Jean.