Jean came and sat down beside him.

“It’s the only home we have ever known,” she said.  “We came here from India to live with our great-aunt—­first me alone, and then David and Jock.  And Father and Mother were with us when Father had leave.  I have hardly ever been away from The Rigs.  It’s such a very affectionate sort of house—­perhaps that is rather an absurd thing to say, but you do get so fond of it.  But if I take you in to see Mrs. M’Cosh in the kitchen she will tell you plenty of faults.  The water doesn’t heat well, for one thing, and the range simply eats up coal, and there is no proper pantry.  Your wife would want to know about these things.”

“Haven’t got a wife,” said Peter Reid gruffly.

“No?  Well, your housekeeper, then.  You couldn’t buy a house without getting to know all about the hot water and pantries.”

“There is no question of my buying it.”

“Oh, isn’t there?” cried Jean joyfully.  “What a relief!  All the time I’ve been showing you the house I’ve been picturing us removing sadly to a villa in the Langhope Road.  They are quite nice villas as villas go, but they have only tiny strips of gardens, and stairs that come to meet you as you go in at the front door, and anyway no house could ever be home to us after The Rigs—­not though it had hot and cold water in every room and a pantry on every floor.”

“Dear me,” said Peter Reid.

He felt perplexed, and annoyed with himself for being perplexed.  All he had to do was to tell this girl with the frank eyes that The Rigs was his, that he wanted to live in it himself, that if they would turn out at once he would make it worth their while.  Quite simple—­They were nice people evidently, and would make no fuss.  He would say it now—­but Jean was speaking.

“I think I know why you wanted to see through this house,” she was saying.  “I think you must have known it long ago when you were a boy.  Perhaps you loved it too—­and had to leave it.”

“I went to London when I was eighteen to make my fortune.”

“Oh,” said Jean, and into that “Oh” she put all manner of things she could not say.  She had been observing her visitor, and she was sure that this shabby little man (Peter Reid cared not at all for appearances and never bought a new suit of clothes unless compelled) had returned no Whittington, Lord Mayor of London.  Probably he was one of the “faithful failures” of the world, one who had tried and missed, and had come back, old and tired and shabby, to see his boyhood’s home.  The tenderest corner of Jean’s tender heart was given to shabby people, and she longed to try to comfort and console, but dared not in case of appearing impertinent.  She reflected dismally that he had not even a wife to be nice to him, and he was far too old to have a mother.

“Are you staying in Priorsford?” she asked gently.

“I’m at the Temperance Hotel for a few days.  I—­the fact is, I haven’t been well.  I had to take a rest, so I came back here—­after thirty years.”