When, after a minute, she handed it back she assured Pamela that the likeness was wonderful.

“She has caught it exactly, that look in his eyes as if he were telling you it was ‘fair time of day’ with him.  Oh, dear Duncan!  It’s fair time of day with him now, I am sure, wherever he is....  He was twenty-two when he fell three years ago....  You’ve often heard Mrs. Macdonald speak of her sons.  Duncan was the youngest by a lot of years—­the baby.  The others are frighteningly clever, but Duncan was a lamb.  They all adored him, but he wasn’t spoiled....  Life was such a joke to Duncan.  I can’t even now think of him as dead.  He was so full of abounding life one can’t imagine him lying still—­quenched.  You know that odd little poem: 

  “’And Mary’s the one that never liked angel stories,
    And Mary’s the one that’s dead....’

Death and Duncan seem such a long way apart.  Many people are so dull and apathetic that they never seem more than half alive, so they don’t leave much of a gap when they go.  But Duncan—­The Macdonalds are brave, but I think living to them is just a matter of getting through now.  The end of the day will mean Duncan.  I am glad you thought about getting the miniature done.  You do have such nice thoughts, Pamela.”

The Macdonalds’ manse stood on the banks of Tweed, a hundred yards or so below Peel Tower, a square house of grey stone in a charming garden.

Mr. Macdonald loved his garden and worked in it diligently.  It was his doctor, he said.  When his mind got stale and sermon-writing difficult, when his head ached and people became a burden, he put on an old coat and went out to dig, or plant or mow the grass.  He grew wonderful flowers, and in July, when his lupins were at their best, he took a particular pleasure in enticing people out to see the effect of their royal blue against the silver of Tweed.

He had been a minister in Priorsford for close on forty years and had never had more than L250 of a salary, and on this he and his wife had brought up four sons who looked, as an old woman in the church said, “as if they’d aye got their meat.”  There had always been a spare place at every meal for any casual guest, and a spare bedroom looking over Tweed that was seldom empty.  And there had been no lowering of the dignity of a manse.  A fresh, wise-like, middle-aged woman opened the door to visitors, and if you had asked her she would have told you she had been in service with the Macdonalds since she was fifteen, and Mrs. Macdonald would have added that she never could have managed without Agnes.

The sons had worked their way with bursaries and scholarships through school and college, and now three of them were in positions of trust in the government of their country.  One was in London, two in India—­and Duncan lay in France, that Holy Land of our people.

It was a nice question his wife used to say before the War (when hearts were lighter and laughter easier) whether Mr. Macdonald was prouder of his sons or his flowers, and when, as sometimes happened he had them all with him in the garden, his cup of content had been full.