a tea-cosy, so soft and warm and comfortable.  Somehow they always seem to be there when you want them.  You never go to their door and get a dusty answer.  There is the same welcome for everyone, gentle and simple, and always the bright fire, and the kind, smiling faces, and tea with thick cream and cake of the richest and freshest....  You know how some people beg you to visit them, and when you go they seem to wear a surprised look, and you feel unexpected and awkward?  The Duncans make you feel so pleased with yourself.  They are so unselfishly interested in other people’s concerns; and they are grand laughers.  Even the dullest warm to something approaching wit when surrounded by that appreciative audience of three.  They don’t talk much themselves, but they have made of listening a fine art.”

“Jean,” said Pamela, “do you actually mean to tell me that everybody in Priorsford is nice?  Or are you merely being charitable?  I don’t know anything duller than your charitable person who always says the kind thing.”

Jean laughed.  “I’m sorry, but I’m afraid the Priorsford people are all more or less nice.  At least, they seem so to me, but perhaps I’m not very discriminating.  You will tell me what you think of them when you meet them.  All these people I’ve been telling you about are rich people, ‘in a large way,’ as Priorsford calls it.  They have all large motor-cars and hothouses and rich things like that.  Mrs. M’Cosh says Priorsford is a ‘real tone-y wee place,’ and we do fancy ourselves a good deal.  It’s a community largely made up of women and middle-aged retired men.  You see, there is nothing for the young men to do; we haven’t even mills like so many of the Tweedside towns.”

“Will people call on me?” Pamela asked.  “Is Priorsford sociable?”

Jean pursed up her mouth in an effort to look worldly wise.  “I think you will find it sociable, but if you had come here obscure and unknown, your existence would never have been heard of, even if you had taken a house and settled down.  Priorsford hardly looks over its shoulder at a newcomer.  Some of the ‘little’ people might call and ask you to tea—­the kind ‘little’ people—­but—­”

“Who do you call the ‘little’ people?”

“All the people who aren’t ‘in a large way,’ all the dwellers in the snug little villas—­most of Priorsford in fact.”  Jean got up to go.  “Dear me, look at the time!  The boys will be home from school.  May I have the book you spoke of?  Priorsford would be enraged if it heard me calmly discussing its faults and foibles.”  She laughed softly.  “Lewis Elliot says Priorsford is made up of three classes—­the dull, the daft, and the devout.”

Pamela, looking for the book she wanted to lend to Jean, stopped and stood still as if arrested by the name.

“Lewis Elliot!”

“Yes, of Laverlaw.  D’you know him, by any chance?”

“I used to know a Lewis Elliot who had some connection with Priorsford, but I thought he had left it years ago.”