“Oh well, I couldn’t stand that—­”

“Of course you couldn’t.  Neither could I. An hotel indeed!”—­with withering scorn—­“And we with four empty bedrooms crying aloud at night because two of their fellows are occupied and they are left out in the cold!  An hotel!  I’d just like to see you!”

“My guidness!  Is she often like this, Jock?”

“Oh, always!  I thought you knew her.  Why couldn’t you warn me in time?—­No!” as Lady Elspeth attempted to speak—­“It’s too late now.  We’re bound for life.  There’s no cutting the bond.  The Vicar told us so.”

“You’re both clean daft together,” said the old lady, with dancing eyes.  “Well, I’ll stop in one of your crying bedrooms—­on conditions.  We’ll talk about that later on.  Where’s the rest of the island, and how do you get to it?”

“Old ladies and luggage ride.  We youngsters walk.  There’s Charles waiting for you at the carriage.  There you are!  Au revoir!”

As the young people breasted the steep, Pixley—­forgetting entirely his vow never to do it on foot again—­unfolded to them Lady Elspeth’s idea, which simply was, that if the Red House could hold them all,—­of which she had her doubts, in spite of his assertions,—­they should all share expenses and such household duties as so large a party would involve.

“You see—­if you don’t mind it, Mrs. Graeme,”—­with an apologetic look at Margaret,—­“it will give the two old ladies something to do and will leave us young folks freer to get about.”

“It’s a capital arrangement if the old ladies don’t mind.  Mrs. Carre can get in another girl.  It will keep them all busy seeing that we have enough to eat.  But they’ll soon get used to looking forward two or three days and ordering Friday’s dinner on Tuesday.”

“How long can you stop, old man?” asked Graeme.

“A fortnight—­all being well,” and there was a touch of soberness in it as he said that.  “There’s really nothing doing, and Ormerod’s a good fellow and insisted on it.”

“We can do heaps in a fortnight,” said Miss Penny jubilantly.  “However did you manage to catch Lady Elspeth?”

“She’s a grand old lady.  I found her with my mother when I got there.  She’d been with her ever since—­since the trouble.  And when I proposed bringing my mother she said at once that she was coming too.  She had crows to pick with you two, and so on.  I expect she thought my mother would feel things less if she was with her.”

“She’s an old dear,” said Margaret.  “They shall both have the very best time we can give them.”

“I shall take them conger-eeling,” said Graeme,—­“and to Venus’s Bath”

“And down the Boutiques and the Gouliots”—­suggested Margaret.

“And ormering in Grande Greve,” laughed Miss Penny, who had spent a day there on that alluring pursuit and had come home bruised and wet and dirty.

“Oh, there’s lots of fun in store for them,” said Graeme, laughing like a schoolboy out for a holiday.  “And, as Hennie Penny says, we can do heaps in a fortnight.”