Except David, no member of the Jardine family had ever been inside a hotel, and it was quite an adventure for them to go up the steps from the street, enter the swinging doors, and ask a polite woman with elaborately done hair if they might have luncheon.  Yes, they might, and Peter, at present held tightly in Mhor’s arms, could be fed in the kitchen if that would suit.

Stark had meantime taken the car to a motor-repairing place.

It was half-past three before the car came swooping up to the hotel doors.  Jean gazed at it with a sort of fearful pride.  It looked very well if only it didn’t play them false.  Stark, too, looked well—­a fine, impassive figure.

“Will it be all right, Stark?” she ventured to inquire, but Stark, who rarely committed himself, merely said, “Mebbe.”

Stark had no manners, Jean reflected, but he had a nice face and was a teetotaller, and one can’t have everything.

To Mhor’s joy the road now ran for a bit by the side of the railway line where thundered great express trains such as there never were in Priorsford.  They were spinning along the fine level road, making up for lost time, when a sharp report startled them and made Mhor, who was watching a train, lose his balance and fall forward on to Peter, who was taking a sleep on the rug at their feet.

It was a tyre gone, and there was no time to mend it if they were to be at Carlisle in time for tea.  Stark put on the spare wheel and they started again.

Fortune seemed to have got tired of persecuting them, and there were no further mishaps.  They ran without a pause through village after village, snatching glimpses of lovely places where they would fain have lingered, forgetting them as each place offered new beauties.

The great excitement to Jock and Mhor was the crossing of the Border.

“I did it once,” said Mhor, “when I came from India, but I didn’t notice it.”

“Rather not,” said Jock; “you were only two.  I was four, wasn’t I, Jean? when I came from India, and I didn’t notice it.”

“Is there a line across the road?” Mhor asked.  “And do the people speak Scots on one side and English on the other?  I suppose we’ll go over with a bump.”

“There’s nothing to show,” Jock told him, “but there’s a difference in the air.  It’s warmer in England.”

“It’s very uninterested of Peter to go on sleeping,” Mhor said in a disgusted tone.  “You would think he would feel there was something happening.  And he’s a Scots dog, too.”

The Border was safely crossed, and Jock professed to notice at once a striking difference in air and landscape.

“There’s an English feel about things now,” he insisted, sniffing and looking all round him; “and I hear the English voices....  Mhor, this is how the Scots came over to fight the English, only at night and on horseback—­into Carlisle Castle.”

“And I was English,” said Mhor dreamily, “and I had a big black horse and I pranced on the Castle wall and killed everyone that came.”