Jean shook her head.  “They could always be a little kind ...  Pamela, I love myself in this coat.  You can’t think what a delight colours are to me.”  She stopped, and then said shyly, “You have brought colour into all our lives.  I can see now how drab they were before you came.”

“Oh dear, no, Jean, your life was never drab.  It could never be drab whatever your circumstances, you have so much happiness within yourself.  I don’t think anything in life could ever quite down you, and even death—­what of death, Jean?”

Jean looked up from her stocking.  “As Boswell said to Dr. Johnson, ’What of death, Sir?’ and the great man was so angry that the little twittering genius should ask lightly of such a terrifying thing that he barked at him and frightened him out of the room!  I suppose the ordinary thing is never to think about death at all, to keep the thought pushed away.  But that makes people so afraid of it.  It’s such a bogey to them.  The Puritans went to the other extreme and dressed themselves in their grave-clothes every day.  Wasn’t it Samuel Rutherford who advised people to ‘forefancy their latter end’?  I think that’s where Great-aunt Alison got the idea; she certainly made us ‘forefancy’ ours!  But apart from what death may mean to each of us—­life itself gets all its meaning from death.  If we didn’t know that we had all to die we could hardly go on living, could we?”

“Well,” said Pamela, “it would certainly be difficult to bear with people if their presence and our own were not utterly uncertain.  And if we knew with surety when we rose in the morning that for another forty years we would go on getting up, and having a bath and dressing, we would be apt to expire with ennui.  We rise with alacrity because we don’t know if we shall ever put our clothes on again.”

Jean gave a little jump of expectation.  “It’s frightfully interesting.  You never do know when you get up in the morning what will happen before night.”

“Most people find that a little wearing.  It isn’t always nice things that happen, Jean.”

“Not always, of course, but far more nice things than nasty ones.”

“Jean, I’m afraid you’re a chirping optimist.  You’ll reduce me to the depths of depression if you insist on being so bright.  Rather help me to rail against fate, and so cheer me.”

“Do you realise that Davie will be home next week?” said Jean, as if that were reason enough for any amount of optimism.  “I think, on the whole, he has enjoyed his first term, but he was pretty homesick at first.  He never actually said so, but he told us in one letter that he smelt the tea when he made it, for it was the one thing that reminded him of home.  And another time he spoke with passionate dislike of the pollarded trees, because such things are unknown on Tweedside.  I’m so glad he has made quite a lot of friends.  I was afraid he might be so shy and unforthcoming that he would put people off, but he writes enthusiastically