“Oh no, thank you, the car is at the gate.  We are going on to tea with Lady Tweedie.  ’You simply must spare me an afternoon, Mrs. Duff-Whalley,’ she said to me the other day, and I rang her up and said we would come to-day.  Life is really such a rush.  And we are going abroad in February and March.  We must have some sunshine.  Not that we need it for our health, for we’re both as strong as ponies.  I haven’t been a day in bed for years, and Muriel the same, I’m thankful to say.  We’ve never had to waste money on doctors.  And the War kept us so cooped up, it’s really pleasant to feel we can get about again.  I thought on our way south we would make a tour of the battlefields.  I think one owes it to the men who fought for us to go and visit their graves—­poor fellows!  I saw Mrs. Macdonald—­you go to their church, don’t you?—­at a meeting yesterday, and I said if she would give me particulars I’d try and see her boy’s grave.  They won’t be able to go themselves, poor souls, and I thought it would be a certain consolation to them to know that a friend had gone.  I must say, I think she might have shown more gratitude.  She was really quite off-hand.  I think ministers’ wives have often bad manners; they deal so much with the working classes....”

Jean thought of a saying she had read of Dr. Johnson’s:  “He talked to me at the Club one day concerning Catiline’s conspiracy—­so I withdrew my attention and thought about Tom Thumb.”  When she came back to Mrs. Duff-Whalley that lady was saying: 

“Did you say, Jean, that Miss Reston is coming back to Priorsford soon?”

“Yes, any day.”

“Fancy!  And her brother too?”

Jean said she thought not:  Lord Bidborough was going to London.

“Ah! then we shall see him there.  I don’t know when I met anyone with whom I felt so instantly at home.  He has such easy manners.  It really is a pleasure to meet a gentleman.  I do wish my boy Gordon had seen more of him.  I’m sure they would have been friends.  So good for a boy, you know, to have a man of the world to go about with.  Well, good-bye, Jean.  You really look very washed out.  What you really need is a thorough holiday and change of scene.  Why, you haven’t been away for years.  Two months in London would do wonders for you—­”

The handle of the door turned and a voice said, “May I come in?” and without waiting for permission Pamela Reston walked in, bare-headed, wrapped in a cloak, and with her embroidery-frame under her arm, as she had come many times to The Rigs during her stay at Hillview.

When Jean heard the voice it seemed to her as if everything was transformed.  Mrs. Duff-Whalley and Muriel, their sables and their Rolls-Royce, ceased to be great weights crushing life and light out of her, and became small, ordinary, rather vulgar figures; she forgot her own home-made frock and shabby slippers; and even the fire seemed to feel that things were brightening, for a flame struggled through the backing and gave promise of future cheerfulness.