“Trees are wonderful always,” said Jean. “’Solomon spake of trees’—­I do wonder what he said.  I suppose it would be the cedars of Lebanon he ‘spake’ of, and the hyssop that grows in the walls, and sycamores, but he would have been worth hearing on a rowan tree flaming red against a blue September sky.  Look at that newly ploughed field so softly brown, and the faded gold of the beech hedge.  November is a cheery time.  The only depressing time of the year to me is when the swallows go away.  I can’t bear to see them wheeling round and preparing to depart.  I want so badly to go with them.  It always brings back to me the feeling I had as a child when people read Hans Andersen to me—­the storks in The Marsh King’s Daughter, talking about the mud in Egypt.  Imagine Priorsford swallows in Egypt!...  As the song says: 

  “‘It’s dowie at the hint o’ hair’st
    At the way-gaun o’ the swallow.’”

“What a lovely sound Lowland Scots has,” said Pamela.  “I like to hear you speak it.  Tell me about Mrs. Hope, Jean.  I do hope we shall see her alone.  I don’t like Priorsford tea-parties; they are rather like a foretaste of eternal punishment.  With no choice you are dumped down beside the most irrelevant sort of person, and there you remain.  I went to return Mrs. Duff-Whalley’s call the other day, and fell into one.  Before I could retreat I was wedged into a chair beside a woman whom I hope I shall never see again.  She was one of those bleak people who make the thought of getting up in the morning and dressing quite insupportable.  I don’t think there was a detail in her domestic life that she didn’t touch on.  She told me all her husband could eat and couldn’t eat; she called her children ‘little tots,’ and said she couldn’t get so much as a ‘serviette’ washed in the house.  I thought nobody talked of serviettes outside Wells and Arnold Bennett.  Mrs. Duff-Whalley rescued me in the nick of time before I could do anything desperate, and then she cross-examined me as to my reasons for coming to Priorsford.”

Jean laughed.  “What a cheery afternoon!  But it will be all right to-day.  Mrs. Hope never sees more than one or two people at a time.  She is pretty old, you see, and frail, though she has such an extraordinary gift of being young.  I do hope you will like each other.  She has an edge to her tongue, but she is an incomparable friend.  The poor people go to her in flocks, and she scolds them roundly, but always knows how to help them in the only wise way.  Her people have been in Priorsford for ages; she knows every soul in the place, and is vastly amused at all the little snobberies that abound in a small town.  But she laughs kindly.  Pretentious people are afraid of her; simple people love her.”

“Am I simple, Jean?”

Jean laughed and refused to give an opinion on the subject, beyond quoting the words of Autolycus—­“How blessed are we that are not simple men.”