“What did he give them?” Mhor asked.

“Chicken and boiled ham and meringues and sugar biscuits and lemonade” (mentioning a few of Mhor’s favourite articles of food), “and he tucked them up on the sofa and they slept till morning, and got into the train and came home, and that’s all.”

“Me next,” said Mhor.  “Suppose they didn’t come home again.  Suppose they started from Oxford and went all round the world.  And I met a magician—­in India that was—­and he gave me an elephant with a gold howdah on its back, and I wasn’t frightened for it—­such a meek, gentle, dirty animal—­and Peter and me sat on it and it pulled off cocoanuts with its trunk and handed them back to us, and we lived there always, and I had a Newfoundland pup and Peter had a golden crown because he was king of all the dogs, and I never went to bed and nobody ever washed my ears and we made toffee every day, every single day....”  His voice trailed away into silence as he contemplated this blissful vision, and Jock, wooed from his Greek verbs by the interest of the game, burst in with his unmanageable voice: 

“Suppose a Russian man-of-war came up Tweed and started shelling Priorsford, and the parish church was hit and the steeple fell into Thomson’s shop and scattered the haddocks and kippers and things all over the street, and——­”

“Did you pick them up, Jock?” squealed Mhor, who regarded Jock as the greatest living humorist, and now at the thought of the scattered kippers wallowed on the floor with laughter.

Jock continued:  “And another shell blew the turrety thing off The Towers and blew Mrs. Duff-Whalley right over the West Law and landed her in Caddon Burn——­”

“Hurray!” yelled Mhor.

Jock was preparing for a further flight of fancy, when Mrs. M’Cosh, having finished washing the dishes, came in to say that Thomson had never sent the sausages for Mr. David’s breakfast, and she could not see him depart for England unfortified by sausages and poached eggs.

“I’ll just slip down and get them,” she announced, being by no means averse to a stroll along the lighted Highgate.  It was certainly neither Argyle Street nor the Paisley Road, but it bore a far-off resemblance to those gay places, and for that Mrs. M’Cosh was thankful.  There was a cinema, too, and that was a touch of home.  Talking over Priorsford with Glasgow friends she would say, “It’s no’ juist whit I wud ca’ the deid country—­no juist paraffin-ile and glaury roads, ye ken.  We hev gas an’ plain-stanes an’ a pictur hoose.”

When Mrs. M’Cosh left the room Jock returned to his books, and the Mhor, his imagination fermenting with the thought of bombs on Priorsford, retired to the window-seat to think out further damage.

* * * * *

Some hours later, when Jock and Mhor were fast asleep and David, his packing finished, was preparing to go to bed, Jean slipped into the room.