“But, Mrs. Hope,” said Pamela, laying down her cup, “this is most depressing hearing.  I came here to find simplicity.”

“You needn’t expect to find it in Priorsford.  We aren’t so provincial as all that.  I just wish Mrs. Duff-Whalley could hear you.  Simplicity indeed!  I’m not able to go out much now, but I sit here and watch people, and I am astonished at the number of restless eyes.  So many people spend their lives striving to keep in the swim.  They are miserable in case anyone gets before them, in case a neighbour’s car is a better make, in case a neighbour’s entertainments are more elaborate....  Two girls came to see me this morning, nice girls, pretty girls, but even my old eyes could see the powder on their faces and their touched-up eyes.  And their whole talk was of daft-like dances, and bridge, and absurdities.  If they had been my daughters I would have whipped them for their affected manners.  And when I think of their grandmother!  A decent woman was Mirren Somerville.  She lived with her father in that ivy-covered cottage at our gates, and she did sewing for me before she married Banks.  She wasn’t young when she married.  I remember she came to ask my advice.  ‘D’you care for him, Mirren?’ I asked.  ‘Well, mem, it’s no’ as if I were a young lassie.  I’m forty, and near bye caring.  But he’s a dacent man, and it’s lonely now ma faither’s awa, an’ I’m a guid cook, an’ he would aye come in to a clean fireside.’  So she married him and made a good wife to him, and they had one son.  And Mirren’s son is now Sir John Banks, a baronet and an M.P.  Tuts, the thing’s ridiculous....  Not that there’s anything wrong with the man.  He’s a soft-tongued, stuffed-looking butler-like creature, with a lot of that low cunning that is known as business instinct, but he was good to his mother.  He didn’t marry till she died, and she kept house for him in his grand new house—­the dear soul with her caps and her broad south-country accent.  She managed wonderfully, for she had great natural dignity, and aped nothing.  It was the butler killed her.  She could cope with the women servants, but when Sir John felt that his dignity required a butler she gave it up.  I dare say she was glad enough to go....  ‘Eh, mem, I am effrontit,’ she used to say to me if I went in and found her spotless kitchen disarranged, and I thought of her to-day when I saw those silly little painted faces, and was glad she had been spared the sight of her descendants....  But what am I raging about?  What does it matter to me, when all’s said?  Let the lassies dress up as long as they have the heart; they’ll have long years to learn sense if they’re spared....  Miss Reston, did you ever see anything bonnier than Tweed and Hopetoun Woods?  Jean, my dear, Lewis Elliot brought me a book last night which really delighted me.  Poems by Violet Jacob.  If anyone could do for Tweeddale what she has done for Angus I would be glad....”