Chapter III: Part 3

"Yes," said Elizabeth, "but Mrs. Veitch will perhaps be thinking we are having them to-night, and I would feel mean to neglect her present. You needn't smile in that superior way, Kirsty Christie."

"They are excellent scones," said Mr. Seton, "and I'm greatly obliged to Mrs. Veitch. She is a fine woman--comes of good Border stock."

"She's a dear," said Elizabeth; "though she scares me sometimes, she is so utterly sincere. That's grievous, isn't it, Father?--to think I live with such double-dealers that sincerity scares me."

Mr. Seton shook his head at her.

"You talk a great deal of nonsense, Elizabeth," he said, a fact which Elizabeth felt to be so palpably true that she made no attempt to deny it.

Later, when the tea-things had been cleared away and the three boys lay stretched on the carpet looking for a picture of the roc's egg in a copy of _The Arabian Nights_, James Seton sat down rather weariedly in one of the big chintz-covered chairs by the fire.

"You're tired, Father," said Elizabeth.

James Seton smiled at his daughter. "Lazy, Lizbeth, that's all--lazy and growing old!"

"Old?" said Elizabeth. "Why, Father, you're the youngest person I have ever known. You're only about half the age of this weary worldling your daughter. You can never say you're old, wicked one, when you enjoy fairy tales just as much as Buff. I do believe that you would rather read a fairy tale than a theological book. He can't deny it, Kirsty. Oh, Father, Father, it's a sad thing to have to say about a U.F. minister, and it's sad for poor Kirsty, who has been so well brought up, to have all her clerical illusions shattered."

"Oh, girl," said her father, "do you never tire talking?"

"Never," said Elizabeth cheerfully, "but I'm going to read to you now for a change. Don't look so scared, Kirsty; it's only a very little poem."

"I'm sure I've no objection to hearing it," said Miss Christie, sitting up in her chair.

Elizabeth lifted a blue-covered book from a table, sat down on the rug at her father's feet, and began to read. It was only a very little poem, as she had said--a few exquisite strange lines. When she finished she looked eagerly up at her father and--"Isn't it magical?" she asked.

"Let me see the book," said Mr. Seton, and at once became engrossed.

"It's very nice," said Miss Christie; "but your voice, Elizabeth, makes anything sound beautiful."

"Kirsty, my dear, how pretty of you!"

Elizabeth's hands were clasped round her knees, and she sat staring into the red heart of the fire as she repeated:

"Who said 'All Time's delight
Hath she for narrow bed:
Life's troubled bubble broken'?
That's what I said."

Kirsty, I love that--'Life's troubled bubble broken'."

"Say it to me Lizbeth," said Buff, who had left his book when his sister began to read aloud.

"You wouldn't understand it, sonny."

"But I like the sound of the words," Buff protested. So Elizabeth said it again.

"Who said Peacock Pie?
The old King to the Sparrow...."

"I like it," said Buff, when she had finished. "Say me another."

"Not now, son. I want to talk to Kirsty now. When you go to bed I shall read you a lovely one about a Zebra called Abracadeebra. Have you done your lessons for to-morrow? No? Well, do them now. Thomas and Billy will do them with you--and in half an hour I'll play 'Yellow Dog Dingo.'"

Having mapped out the evening for her young brother, Elizabeth rose from her lowly position on the hearth-rug, drew forward a chair, and said, "Now, Kirsty, we'll have a talk."

That Elizabeth Seton and Christina Christie should be friends seemed a most improbable thing. They were both ministers' daughters, but there any likeness ended. It seemed as if there could be nothing in common between this tall golden Elizabeth with her impulsive ways, her rapid heedless speech, her passion for poetry, her faculty for making new friends at every turn, and Christina, short, dark, and neat, with a mind as well-ordered as her raiment, suspicious of strangers and chilling with her nearest--and yet a very true friendship did exist.

"How is your mother?" asked Elizabeth.

"Mother's wonderful. Father has been in the house three days with lumbago. Jeanie has a cold too. I think it's the damp weather. This is my month of housekeeping. I wish, Elizabeth, you would tell me some new puddings. Archie says ours are so dull."

Elizabeth immediately threw herself into the subject of puddings.

"I know one new pudding, but it takes two days to make and it's very expensive. We only have it for special people. You know 'Aunt Mag,' of course? and 'Uncle Tom'? That's only 'Aunt Mag' with treacle. Semolina, sago, big rice--we call those milk things, we don't dignify them by the name of pudding. What else is there? Tarts, oh! and bread puddings, and there's that greasy kind you eat with syrup, suet dumplings. A man in the church was very ill, and the doctor said he hadn't any coating or lining or something inside him, because his wife hadn't given him any suet dumplings."

"Oh, Elizabeth!"

"A fact, I assure you," said Elizabeth. "We always have a suet dumpling once a week because of that. I'm afraid I'm not being very helpful, Kirsty. Do let's think of something quite new, only it's almost sure not to be good. That is so discouraging about the dishes one invents.... Apart from puddings, how is Archie?"

"Oh, he's quite well, and doing very well in business. He has Father's good business head."

"Yes," said Elizabeth. She did not admire anything about the Rev. Johnston Christie, least of all his business head. He was a large pompous man, with a booming voice and a hearty manner, and he had what is known in clerical circles as a "suburban charge." Every Sunday the well-dressed, well-fed congregation culled from villadom to which he ministered filled the handsome new church, and Mr. Christie's heart grew large within him as he looked at it. He was a poor preacher but an excellent organiser: he ran a church as he would have run a grocery establishment. His son Archie was exactly like him, but Christina had something of her mother, a deprecating little woman with feeble health and a sense of humour whom Elizabeth called Chuchundra after the musk-rat in the _Jungle Book_ that could never summon up courage to run into the middle of the room.

"Yes," said Elizabeth, "I foresee a brilliant future for Archie, full of money and motor-cars and knighthoods."

"Oh! I don't know," said Christina, "but I think he has the knack of making money. How are your brothers?"

"Both well, I'm glad to say. Walter has got a new job--in the Secretariat--and finds it vastly entertaining. Alan seems keener about polo than anything else, but he's only a boy after all."

"You talk as if you were fifty at least."

"I'm getting on," said Elizabeth. "Twenty-eight is a fairly ripe age, don't you think?"

"No, I don't," said Christina somewhat shortly. Christina was thirty-five.

"Buff asked me yesterday if I remembered Mary Queen of Scots," went on Elizabeth, "and he alluded to me in conversation with Thomas as 'my elderly nasty sister.'"

"Cheeky little thing!" said Christina. "You spoil that child."

Elizabeth laughed, and by way of turning the conversation asked Christina's advice as to what would sell best at coming bazaars. At all bazaar work Christina was an expert, and she had so many valuable hints to give that long before she had come to an end of them Elizabeth was hauled away to play "Yellow Dog Dingo."

Christina had little liking for children, and it was with unconcealed horror that she watched her friend bounding from _Little God Nqu_ (Billy) to _Middle God Nquing_ (Buff), then to _Big God Nquong_ (Thomas), begging to be made different from all other animals, and wonderfully popular by five o'clock in the afternoon.

It was rather an exhausting game and necessitated much shouting and rushing up and down stairs, and after everyone had had a chance of playing in the title role, Elizabeth sank breathless, flushed and dishevelled, into a chair.

"Well, I _must_ say----" said Christina.

"Come on again," shouted Billy, while Thomas and Buff loped up and down the room.

"No--no," panted Elizabeth, "you're far too hot as it is. What will 'Mamma' say if you go home looking like Red Indians?"

Mr. Seton, quite undisturbed by the noise, had been engrossed in the poetry book, but now he laid it down and looked at his watch.

"I must be going," he said.

But the three boys threw themselves on him--"A bit of Willy Wud; just a little bit of Willy Wud," they pleaded.

James Seton was an inspired teller of tales, and Willy Wud was one of his creations. His adventures--and surely no one ever had stranger and more varied adventures--made a sort of serial story for "after tea" on winter evenings.

"Where did we leave him?" he asked, sitting down obediently.

"Don't you remember, Father?" said Buff. "In the Robbers' Cave."

"He was just untying that girl," said Thomas.

"She wasn't a girl," corrected Billy, "she was a princess."

"It's the same thing," said Thomas. "He was untying her when he found the Robber Chief looking at him with a knife in his mouth."

So the story began and ended all too soon for the eager listeners, and Mr. Seton hurried away to his work.

"Say good-night, Thomas and Billy," said Elizabeth, "and run home. It's very nearly bed-time."

"To-morrow's Saturday," said Thomas suggestively.

"So it is. Ask 'Mamma' if you may come to tea, and come over directly you have had dinner."

Thomas looked dissatisfied.

"Couldn't I say to Mamma you would like us to come to dinner? Then we could come just after breakfast. You see, there's that house we're building----"

"I'm going to buy nails with my Saturday penny," said Billy.

"By all means come to dinner," said Elizabeth, "if Mamma doesn't mind. Good-night, sonnies--now run."

She opened the front-door for them, and watched them scud across the road to their own gate--then she went back to the drawing-room.

"I must be going too," said Miss Christie, sitting back more comfortably in her chair.

"It's Band of Hope night," said Elizabeth.

Buff had been marching up and down the room, with Launcelot in his arms, telling himself a story, but he now came and leant against his sister. She stroked his hair as she asked, "What's the matter, Buffy boy?"

"I wish," said Buff, "that I lived in a house where people didn't go to meetings."

"But I'm not going out till you're in bed. We shall have time for reading and everything. Say good-night to Christina, and see if Ellen has got your bath ready. And, Buff," she said, as he went out of the door, "pay particular attention to your knees--scrub them with a brush; and don't forget your fair large ears, my gentle joy."

"Those boys are curiosities," said Miss Christie. "What house is this they're building?"

"It's a Shelter for Homeless Cats," said Elizabeth, "made of orange boxes begged from the grocer. I think it was Buff's idea to start with, but Thomas has the clever hands. Must you go?"

"These chairs are too comfortable," said Miss Christie, as she rose; "they make one lazy. If I were you, Elizabeth, I wouldn't let Buff talk to himself and tell himself stories. He'll grow up queer.... You needn't laugh."

"I'm very sorry, Christina. I'm afraid we're a frightfully eccentric family, but you'll come and see us all the same, won't you?"

Miss Christie looked at her tall friend, and a quizzical smile lurked at the corner of her rather dour mouth. "Ay, Elizabeth," she said, "you sound very humble, but I wouldn't like to buy you at your own valuation, my dear."

Elizabeth put her hands on Christina's shoulders as she kissed her good-night. "You're a rude old Kirsty," she said, "but I dare say you're right."

_CHAPTER VI_

"How now, sir? What are you reasoning with yourself?
Nay, I was rhyming; 'tis you that have the reason."
_Two Gentlemen of Verona_.

About a fortnight later--it was Saturday afternoon--an April day strayed into November, and James Seton walked in his garden and was grateful.

He had his next day's sermon in his hand and as he walked he studied it, but now and again he would lift his head to look at the blue sky, or he would stoop and touch gently the petals of a Christmas-rose, flowering bravely if sootily in the border. Behind the hedge, on the drying green, Thomas and Billy and Buff disported themselves. They had been unusually quiet, but now the sound of raised voices drew Mr. Seton to the scene of action. Looking over the hedge, he saw an odd sight. Thomas lay grovelling on the ground; Billy, with a fierce black moustache sketched on his cherubic face, sat on the roof of the ash-pit; while Buff, a bulky sack strapped on his back, struggled in the arms of Marget the cook.

"Gie me that bag, ye ill laddie," she was saying.

"What's the matter, Marget?" Mr. Seton asked mildly.

Buff was butting Marget wildly with his head, but hearing his father's voice, he stopped to explain.

"It's my sins, Father," he gasped.

"It's naething o' the kind, sir; it's ma bag o' claes-pins. Stan' up, David, this meenit. D'ye no' see ye're fair scrapin' it i' the mud?"

Thomas raised his head.

"We're pilgrims, Mr. Seton," he explained. "I'm Hopeful, and Buff's Christian. This is me in Giant Despair's dungeon;" and he rolled on his face and realistically chewed the grass to show the extent of his despair.

"But you've got your facts wrong," said Mr. Seton. "Christian has lost his load long before he got to Doubting Castle."

"Then," said Buff, picking himself up and wriggling out of the straps which tied the bag to his person--"then, Marget, you can have your old clothes-pins."

"Gently, my boy," said his father. "Hand the bag to Marget and say you're sorry."

"Sorry, Marget," said Buff in a very casual tone, as he heaved the bag at her.

Marget received it gloomily, prophesied the probable end of Buff, and went indoors.

Buff joined Thomas in the dungeon of Doubting Castle.

"Why is Billy sitting up there?" asked Mr. Seton.

"He's Apollyon," said Thomas, "and he's coming down in a minute to straddle across the way. By rights, I should have been Apollyon----"

Mr. Seton's delighted survey of the guileless fiend on the ash-pit roof was interrupted by Ellen, who came with a message that Mr. Stevenson had called and would Mr. Seton please go in.

In the drawing-room he found Elizabeth conversing with a tall young man, and from the fervour with which she welcomed his appearance he inferred that it was not altogether easy work.

"Father," said Elizabeth, "you remember I told you about meeting Mr. Stevenson at the Thomsons' party? He has brought us such a treasure of a ballad book to look over. Do let my father see it, Mr. Stevenson."

James Seton greeted the visitor in his kind, absent-minded way, and sat down to discuss ballads with him, while Elizabeth, having, so to speak, laboured in rowing, lay back and studied Mr. Stevenson. That he was an artist she knew. She also knew his work quite well and that it was highly thought of by people who mattered. He had a nice face, she thought; probably not much sense of humour, but tremendously decent. She wondered what his people were like. Poor, she imagined--perhaps a widowed mother, and he had educated himself and made every inch of his own way. She felt a vicarious stir of pride in the thought.

As a matter of fact she was quite wrong, and Stewart Stevenson's parents would have been much hurt if they had known her thoughts.

His father was a short, fat little man with a bald head, who had dealt so successfully in butter and ham that he now occupied one of the largest and reddest villas in Maxwell Park (Lochnagar was its name) and every morning was whirled in to business in a Rolls-Royce car.

For all his worldly success Mr. Stevenson senior remained a simple soul. His only real passion in life (apart from his sons) was for what he called "time-pieces." Every room in Lochnagar contained at least two clocks. In the drawing-room they had alabaster faces and were supported by gilt cupids; in the dining-room they were of dignified black marble; the library had one on the mantelpiece and one on the writing-table--both of mahogany with New Art ornamentations. Two grandfather-clocks stood in the hall--one on the staircase and one on the first landing. Mr. Stevenson liked to have one minute's difference in the time of each clock, and when it came to striking the result was nerve-shattering. Mrs. Stevenson had a little nut-cracker face and a cross look which, as her temper was of the mildest, was most misleading. Her toque--she wore a toque now instead of a bonnet--was always a little on one side, which gave her a slightly distracted look. Her clothes were made of the best materials and most expensively trimmed, but somehow nothing gave the little woman a moneyed look. Even the Russian sables her husband had given her on her last birthday looked, on her, more accidental than opulent. Her husband was her oracle and she hung on his words, invariably capping all his comments on life and happenings with "Ay. That's it, Pa."

Their pride in their son was touching. His height, his good looks, his accent, his "gentlemanly" manners, his love of books, his talent as an artist, kept them wondering and amazed. They could not imagine how they had come to have such a son. It was certainly disquieting for Mr. Stevenson who read nothing but the newspapers on week-days and _The British Weekly_ on the Sabbath, and for his wife who invariably fell asleep when she attempted to dally with even the lightest form of literature, to have a son whose room was literally lined with books and who would pore with every mark of enjoyment over the dullest of tomes.

His artistic abilities were not such a phenomenon, and could be traced back to a sister of Mr. Stevenson's called Lizzie who had sketched in crayons and died young.

Had Stewart Stevenson been a poor man's son he would probably have worked long without recognition, eaten the bread of poverty and found his studio-rent a burden, but, so contrariwise do things work, with an adoring father and a solid Ham and Butter business at his back his pictures found ready purchasers.

To be honest, Mr. Stevenson senior was somewhat astonished at the taste shown by his son's patrons. To him the Twopence Coloured was always preferable to the Penny Plain. He could not help wishing that his son would try to paint things with a little more colour in them. He liked Highland cattle standing besides a well, with a lot of purple heather about; or a snowy landscape with sheep in the foreground and the sun setting redly behind a hill. He was only bewildered when told to remark this "sumptuous black," that "seductive white." He saw "no 'colour' in the smoke from a chimney, or 'bloom' in dingy masonry viewed through smoke haze." To him "nothing looked fine" save on a fine day, and he infinitely preferred the robust oil-paintings on the walls of Lochnagar to his son's delicate black-and-white work.

But he would not for worlds have admitted it....

To return. As Elizabeth sat listening to the conversation of her father and Stewart Stevenson, Ellen announced "Mr. Jamieson," and a thin, tall old man came into the room. He was lame and walked with the help of two sticks. When he saw a stranger he hung back, but James Seton sprang up to welcome him, and Elizabeth said as she shook hands:

"You've come at the most lucky moment. We are talking about your own subject, old Scots songs and ballads. Mr. Stevenson is quite an authority."

As the old man shook hands with the young one, "I do like," he said, "to hear of a young man caring for old things."

"And I," said Elizabeth, "do like an old man who cares for young things. I must tell you. Last Sunday I found a small, very grubby boy waiting at the hall door long before it was time for the Sabbath school. I asked him what he was doing, and he said, 'Waitin' for the class to gang in.' Then he said proudly, 'A'm yin o' John Jamieson's bairns.'" She turned to Mr. Stevenson and explained: "Mr. Jamieson has an enormous class of small children and is adored by each of them."

"It must take some looking after," said Mr. Stevenson. "How d'you make them behave?"

Mr. Jamieson laughed and confessed that sometimes they were beyond him.

"The only thing I do insist on is a clean face, but sometimes I'm beat even there. I sent a boy home twice last Sabbath to wash his face, and each time he came back worse. I was just going to send him again, when his neighbour interfered with, 'Uch here! he _wash't_ his face, but he wipit it wi' his bunnet, and he bides in a coal ree.'"

Elizabeth turned to see if her father appreciated the tale, but Mr. Seton had got the little old ballad book and was standing in his favourite attitude with one foot on a chair, lost to everything but the words he was reading.

"Now," he said, "this is an example of what I mean by Scots practicalness. It's 'Annan Water'--you know it, Jamieson? The last verse is this:

'O wae betide thee, Annan Water,
I vow thou art a drumly river;
But over thee I'll build a brig,
That thou true love no more may sever.'

You see? The last thought is not the tragedy of love and death, but of the necessity of preventing it happen again. He will build a brig."

He sat down, with the book still in his hand, smiling to himself at the vagaries of the Scots character.

"We're a strange mixture," he said, "a mixture of hard-headedness and romance, common sense and sentiment, practicality and poetry, business and idealism. Sir Walter knew that, so he made the Gifted Gilfillan turn from discoursing of the New Jerusalem of the Saints to the price of beasts at Mauchline Fair."

Mr. Jamieson leaned forward, his face alight with interest.

"And I doubt, Mr. Seton, the romantic side is strongest. Look at our history! Look at the wars we fought under Bruce and Wallace! If we had had any common sense, we would have made peace at the beginning, accepted the English terms, and grown prosperous at the expense of our rich neighbours."

"And look," said Stewart Stevenson, "at our wars of religion. I wonder what other people would have taken to the hills for a refinement of dogma. And the Jacobite risings? What earthly sense was in them? Merely because Prince Charlie was a Stuart, and because he was a gallant young fairy tale prince, we find sober, middle-aged men risking their lives and their fortunes to help a cause that was doomed from the start."

"I'm glad to think," said Mr. Seton, "that with all our prudence our history is a record of lost causes and impossible loyalties."

"I know why it is," said Elizabeth. "We have all of us, we Scots, a queer daftness in our blood. We pretend to be dour and cautious, but the fact is that at heart we are the most emotional and sentimental people on earth."

"I believe you're right," said Stewart Stevenson. "The ordinary emotional races like the Italians and the French are emotional chiefly on the surface; underneath they are a mercantile, hard-headed breed. Now we----"

"We're the other way round," said Elizabeth.

"You can see that when you think what type of man we chiefly admire," said Mr. Jamieson; "you might think it would be John Knox----"

"No, no," cried Elizabeth; "I know Father has hankerings after him, but I would quake to meet him in the flesh."

"Sir Walter Scott," suggested Mr. Stevenson.

"Personally I would vote for Sir Walter," said Mr. Seton.

"Ah, but, Mr. Seton," said John Jamieson, "I think you'll admit that if we polled the country we couldn't get a verdict for Sir Walter. I think it would be for Robert Burns. Burns is the man whose words are most often in our memories. It is Burns we think of with sympathy and affection, and why? I suppose because of his humanity; because of his rich humour and riotous imagination; because of his _daftness_, in a word----"

"It is odd," said Elizabeth; "for by rights, as Thomas would say, we should admire someone quite different. The _Wealth of Nations_ man, perhaps."

"Adam Smith," said Stewart Stevenson.

"You see," said Mr. Seton, "the moral is that he who would lead Scotland must do it not only by convincing the intellect, but above all by firing the imagination and touching the heart. Yes, I can think of a good illustration. In the year 1388, or thereabouts, Douglas went raiding into Northumberland and met the Percy at Otterbourne. We possess both an English and a Scottish account of the battle. The English ballad is called 'Chevy Chase.' It tells very vigorously and graphically how the great fight was fought, but it is only a piece of rhymed history. Our ballad of 'Otterbourne' is quite different. It is full of wonderful touches of poetry, such as the Douglas's last speech:

'My wound is deep I fain would sleep:
Take thou the vanguard of the three;
And hide me by the bracken bush
That grows on yonder lilye lee.
O bury me by the bracken bush,
Beneath the blooming briar;
Let never living mortal ken
That ere a kindly Scot lies here!'"

James Seton got up and walked up and down the room, as his custom was when moved; then he anchored before the fire, and continued:

"The two ballads represent two different temperaments. You can't get over it by saying that the Scots minstrel was a poet and the English minstrel a commonplace fellow. The minstrels knew their audience and wrote what their audience wanted. The English wanted straightforward facts; the Scottish audience wanted the glamour of poetry."

"Father," said Elizabeth suddenly, "I believe that's a bit of the lecture on Ballads you're writing for the Literary Society."

Mr. Seton confessed that it was.

"I thought you sounded like a book," said his daughter.

Stewart Stevenson asked the date of the lecture and if outsiders were admitted, whereupon Elizabeth felt constrained to ask him to dine and go with them, an invitation that was readily accepted.

Teas was brought in, and John Jamieson was persuaded by Elizabeth to tell stories of his "bairns"; and then Mr. Stevenson described a walking-tour he had taken in Skye in the autumn, which enchanted the old man. At last he rose to go, remembering that it was Saturday evening and that the Minister must want to go to his sermon. When he shook hands with the young man he smiled at him somewhat wistfully.

"It's fine to be young," he said. "I was young once myself. It was never my lot to go far afield, but I mind one Fair Holiday I went with a friend to Inverary. To save the fare we out-ran the coach from Lochgoilhead to St. Catherine's--I was soople then--and on the morning we were leaving--the boat left at ten--my friend woke me at two in the morning, and we walked seventeen miles to see the sun rise on Ben Cruachan. We startled the beasts of the forest in Inveraray wood, and I mind as if it were yesterday how the rising sun smote with living fire a white cloud floating on the top of the mountain. My friend caught me by the arm as we watched the moving mist lift. 'Look,' he cried, 'the mountains do smoke!'"

He stopped and reached for his sticks. "Well! it's fine to be young, but it's not so bad to be old as you young folks think."

Elizabeth went with him to the door, and Stewart Stevenson remarked to his host on the wonderful vitality and cheerfulness of the old man.

"Yes," said Mr. Seton, "you would hardly think that he rarely knows what it is to be free of pain. Forty years ago he met with a terrible accident in the works where he was employed. It meant the end of everything to him, but he gathered up the broken bits of his life and made of it--ah, well! A great cloud of witnesses will testify one day to that. He lives beside the church, not a very savoury district as you know--but that little two-roomed house of his shines in the squalor like a good deed in a naughty world. Elizabeth calls him 'the Corregidor.' You remember?

'If any beat a horse, you felt he saw:
If any cursed a woman, he took note
... Not so much a spy
As a recording Chief-inquisitor.'

And with children he's a regular Pied Piper."

Elizabeth came into the room and heard the last words.

"Is Father telling you about Mr. Jamieson? He's one of the people who'll be very 'far ben' in the next world; but when you know my father better, Mr. Stevenson, you will find that when a goose happens to belong to him it is invariably a swan. His church, his congregation, his house, his servants, his sons----"

"Even his slack-tongued and irreverent daughter," put in Mr. Seton.

"Are pretty nearly perfect," finished Elizabeth. "It is one of the nicest things about Father."

"There is something utterly wrong about the young people of this age," remarked Mr. Seton, as he looked at his watch; "they have no respect for their elders. Dear me! it's late. I must get to my sermon."

"You must come again, Mr. Stevenson," said Elizabeth. "It has been so nice seeing you."

And Mr. Stevenson had, perforce, to take his leave.

"A very nice fellow," said Mr. Seton, when the visitor had departed.

"A very personable young man," said Elizabeth, "but some day he'll get himself cursed, I'm afraid, for he doesn't know when to withdraw his foot from his neighbour's house. Half-past six! Nearly Buff's bed-time!" and as Mr. Seton went to his study Elizabeth flew to see what wickedness Buff had perpetrated since tea.

_CHAPTER VII_

"How full of briars is this working-day world!"
_As You Like It_.

It was Monday morning.

Buff was never quite his urbane self on Monday morning. Perhaps the lack of any other occupation on Sabbath made him overwork his imagination, for certainly in the clear cold light of Monday morning it was difficult to find the way (usually such an easy task) to his own dream-world with its cheery denizens--knights and pirates, aviators and dragons. It was desolating to have to sup porridge, that was only porridge and not some tasty stew of wild fowl fallen to his own gun, in a dining-room that was only a dining-room, not a Pirate's Barque or a Robber's Cave.

On Monday, too, he was apt to be more than usually oppressed by his conviction of the utter futility of going to school when he knew of at least fifty better ways of spending the precious hours. So he kicked the table-leg and mumbled when his father asked him questions about his lessons.

Ellen coming in with the letters seemed another messenger of Satan sent to buffet him. Time was when he had been Mercury to his family, but having fallen into the pernicious practice of concealing about his person any letters that took his fancy and forgetting about them till bed-time brought them to light, he was deposed. The memory rankled, and he gloomily watched the demure progress of Ellen as she took the letters to Elizabeth.

"Three for you, Father," said Elizabeth, sorting them out, "and three for me. The Indian letters are both here."

"Read them, will you?" said Mr. Seton, who disliked deciphering letters for himself.

"I'll just see if they're both well and read the letters afterwards if you don't mind. We'll make Buff late. Cheer up, old son" (to that unwilling scholar). "Life isn't all Saturdays. Monday mornings are bound to come. You should be glad to begin again. Why, the boys"--Walter and Alan were known as "the boys"--"wouldn't have thought of sitting like sick owls on Mondays: they were pleased to have a fine new day to do things in."

Buff was heard to ejaculate something that sounded like "Huch," and his sister ceased her bracing treatment and, sitting down beside him, cut his bread-and-butter into "fingers" to make it more interesting. She could sympathise with her sulky young brother, remembering vividly, as she did, her own childish troubles. Only, as she told Buff, coaxing him the while to drink his milk, it was Saturday afternoon she abhorred. It smelt, she said, of soft soap and of the end of things. Monday was cheery: things began again. Why, something delightful might happen almost any minute: there was no saying what dazzling adventures might lurk round any corner. The Saga of Monday as sung by Elizabeth helped down the milk, cheered the heart of Buff, and sent him off on his daily quest for knowledge in a more resigned spirit than five minutes before had seemed possible. Then Elizabeth gathered up the letters and went into the study, where she found her father brooding absorbed over the pots of bulbs that stood in the study windows. "The Roman hyacinths will be out before Christmas," he said, as he turned from his beloved growing things and settled down with a pleased smile to hear news of his sons.

Alan's letter was like himself, very light-hearted. Everything was delightful, the weather he was having, the people he was meeting, the games he was playing. He was full of a new polo-pony he had just bought and called Barbara, and he had also acquired a young leopard, "a jolly little beast but rank."

"Buff will like to hear about it," said Elizabeth, as she turned to Walter's letter, which was more a tale of work and laborious days. "Tell Father," he finished, "that after bowing in the house of Rimmon for months, I had a chance yesterday of attending a Scots kirk. It was fine to hear the Psalms of David sung again to the old tunes. I have always held that it was not David but the man who wrote the metrical version who was inspired."

"Foolish fellow," said Mr. Seton.

Elizabeth laughed, and began to read another letter. Mr. Seton turned to his desk and was getting out paper when a sharp exclamation from his daughter made him look round.

Elizabeth held out the letter to him, her face tragic.

"Aunt Alice is mad," she said.

"Dear me," said Mr. Seton.

"She must be, for she asks if we can take her nephew Arthur Townshend to stay with us for a week?"

"A very natural request, surely," said her father. "It isn't like you to be inhospitable, Elizabeth."

"Oh! it isn't that. Any ordinary young man is welcome to stay for months and months, but this isn't an ordinary young man. He's the sort of person who belongs to all the Clubs--the best ones I mean--and has a man to keep him neat, and fares sumptuously every day, and needs to be amused. And oh! the thought of him in Glasgow paralyses me."

Mr. Seton peered in a puzzled way at the letter he was holding.

"Your aunt appears to say--I wish people would write plainly--that he has business in Glasgow."

Elizabeth scoffed at the idea.

"Is it likely?" she asked. "Why, the creature's a diplomatist. There's small scope for diplomatic talents in the South Side of Glasgow, or 'out West' either."

"But why should he want to come here?"

"He _doesn't_, but my demented aunt--bless her kind heart!--adores him, and she adores us, and it has always been her dream that we should meet and be friends; but he was always away in Persia or somewhere, and we never met. But now he is home, and he couldn't refuse Aunt Alice--she is all the mother he ever knew and has been an angel to him--and I dare say he is quite good-hearted, though I can't stand the type."

"Well, well," said Mr. Seton, by way of closing the subject, and he went over to the window to take a look at the world before settling down to his sermon. "Run away now, like a good girl. Dear me! what a beautiful blue sky for November!"

"Tut, tut," said Elizabeth, "who can think of blue skies in this crisis! Father, have you thought of the question of _drinks_?"

"Eh?"

"Mr. Townshend will want wine--much wine--and how is the desire to be met in this Apollinaris household?"

"He'll do without it," said Mr. Seton placidly. "I foresee the young man will be a reformed character before he leaves us;" and he lifted Launcelot from its seat on the blotter, and sat down happily to his sermon.

Elizabeth shook her head at her provokingly calm parent, and picking up the kitten, she walked to the door.

"Write a specially good sermon this week," she advised. "Remember Mr. Arthur Townshend will be a listener," and closed the door behind her before her father could think of a dignified retort.

Mrs. Henry Beauchamp, the "Aunt Alice" who had dropped the bombshell in to the Seton household, was the only sister of Elizabeth's dead mother. A widow and childless, she would have liked to adopt the whole Seton family, Mr. Seton included, had it been possible. She lived most of the year in London in her house in Portland Place, and in summer she joined the Setons in the South of Scotland.

Arthur Townshend was her husband's nephew. As he had lived much abroad, none of the Setons had met him; but now he was home, and Mrs. Beauchamp having failed in her attempt to persuade Elizabeth to join them in Switzerland, suggested he should pay a visit to Glasgow.

Elizabeth was seriously perturbed. Arthur Townshend had always been a sort of veiled prophet to her, an awe-inspiring person for whom people put their best foot foremost, so to speak. Unconsciously her aunt had given her the impression of a young man particular about trifles--"ill to saddle," as Marget would put it. And she had heard so much about his looks, his abilities, his brilliant prospects, that she had always felt a vague antipathy to the youth.

To meet this paragon at Portland Place would have been ordeal enough, but to have him thrust upon her as a guest, to have to feed him and entertain him for a week, her imagination boggled at it.

"It's like the mountain coming to Mahomet," she reflected. "Mahomet must have felt it rather a crushing honour too."

The question was, Should she try to entertain him? Should she tell people he was coming, and so have him invited out to dinner, invite interesting people to meet him, attempt elaborate meals, and thoroughly upset the household?

She decided she would not. For, she argued with herself, if he's the sort of creature I have a feeling he is, my most lofty efforts will only bore him, and I shall have bored myself to no purpose; if, on the other hand, he is a good fellow, he will like us best _au naturel_. She broke the news to Marget, who remained unmoved.

"What was guid eneuch for oor ain laddies'll surely be guid eneuch for him," she said.

Elizabeth explained that this was no ordinary visitor, but a young man of fashion.

"Set him up!" said Marget; and there the matter rested.

Everything went wrong that day, Elizabeth thought, and for all the untoward events she blamed the prospective visitor. Her father lost his address-book--that was no new thing, for it happened at least twice a week, but what was new was Elizabeth's cross answer when he asked her to find it for him. She wrangled with sharp-tongued Marget (where she got distinctly the worse of the encounter), and even snapped at the devoted Ellen. She broke a Spode dish that her mother had prized, and she forgot to remind her father of a funeral till half an hour after the hour fixed.

Nor did the day ring to evensong without a passage-at-arms with Buff.

In the drawing-room she found, precariously perched on the top of one of the white book-cases, a large unwashed earthy pot.

"What on earth----" she began, when Buff came running to explain. The flower-pot was his, his and Thomas's; and it contained an orange-pip which, if cherished, would eventually become a lovely orange-tree.

"Nonsense," said Elizabeth sharply. "Look how it's marking the enamel;" and she lifted the clumsy pot. Buff caught her arm, and between them the flower-pot smashed on the floor, spattering damp earth around. Then Elizabeth, sorely exasperated, boxed her young brother's ears.

Buff, grieved to the heart at the loss of his orange-tree, and almost speechless with wrath at the affront offered him, glared at his sister with eyes of hate, but "You--you _puddock_!" was all he managed to say.

Elizabeth, her brief anger gone, sat down and laughed helplessly.

Thomas grubbed in the earth for the pip. "By rights," he said gloomily, "we would have had oranges growing mebbe in a month!"

_CHAPTER VIII_

"I do desire it with all my heart: I hope it is no dishonest desire to desire to be a woman of the world." _As You Like It_.

There are many well-kept houses in Glasgow, but I think Jeanieville was one of the cleanest. Every room had its "thorough" day once a fortnight and was turned pitilessly "out." Every "press" in the house was a model of neatness; the very coal-cellar did not escape. The coals were piled in a neat heap; the dross was swept tidily into a corner; the briquettes were built in an accurate pile.

"I must say," Mrs. Thomson often remarked, "I like a tidy coal-cellar;" and Jessie, who felt this was rather a low taste, would reply, "You're awful eccentric, Mamma."

On the first and fourth Thursdays of the month Mrs. Thomson was "at home"; then, indeed, she trod the measure high and disposedly.

On these auspicious days Annie the servant, willing but "hashy," made the front-door shine, and even "sanded" the pillars of the gate to create a good impression. The white steps of the stairs were washed, and the linoleum in the lobby was polished until it became a danger to the unwary walker. Dinner set agoing, Mrs. Thomson tied a large white apron round her ample person and spent a couple of hours in the kitchen baking scones and pancakes and jam-sandwiches, while Jessie, her share of the polishing done, took the car into town and bought various small cakes, also shortbread and a slab of rich sultana cake.

By half past two all was ready.

Mrs. Thomson in her second best dress, and Jessie in a smart silk blouse and skirt, sat waiting. Mrs. Thomson had her knitting, and Jessie some "fancy work." The tea-table with its lace-trimmed cloth and silver tray with the rosy cups ("ma wedding china and only one saucer broken") stood at one side of the fireplace, with a laden cake-rack beside it, while a small table in the offing was also covered with plates of eatables.

There never was any lack of callers at Jeanieville. It was such a vastly comfortable house to call at. The fire burned so brightly, the tea was so hot and fresh, the scones so delicious, and the shortbread so new and crimpy; and when Mrs. Thomson with genuine welcome in her voice said, "Well, this is real nice," no matter how inclement the weather outside each visitor felt the world a warm and kindly place.

Mrs. Thomson enjoyed her house and her handsome furniture, and desired--and hoped it was no dishonest desire--to be a social success; but her kindest smile and heartiest handshake were not for the sealskin-coated ladies of Pollokshields but for such of her old friends as ventured to visit her on her Thursdays, and often poor Jessie's cheeks burned as she heard her mother explain to some elegant suburban lady, as she introduced a friend:

"Mrs. Nicol and me are old friends. We lived for years on the same stair-head."

Except in rare cases, there was no stiffness about the sealskin-ladies, and conversation flowed like a river.

On this particular Thursday four females sat drinking tea with Mrs. Thomson and her daughter out of the rosy cups with the gilt garlands--Mrs. Forsyth and Mrs. Macbean from neighbouring villas, and the Misses Hendry whom we have already met. Mrs. Forsyth was a typical Glasgow woman, large, healthy, prosperous, her face beaming with contentment. She was a thoroughly satisfactory person to look at, for everything about her bore inspection, from her abundant hair and her fresh pink face, which looked as if it were rubbed at least once a day with a nice soapy flannel, to her well-made boots and handsome clothes. Her accent, like Mrs. Thomson's, was Glasgow unabashed.

"Yes, thank you, Mrs. Thomson, two lumps. Did you notice in the papers that my daughter--Mrs. Mason, you know--had had her fourth? Ucha, a fine wee boy, and her only eight-and-twenty! I said to her to-day, 'Mercy, Maggie,' I said, 'who asked you to populate the earth?' I just said it like that, and she _laughed_. Oh ay, but it's far nicer--just like Papa and me. I don't believe in these wee families."

Mrs. Macbean, a little blurred-looking woman with beautiful sables, gave it as her opinion that a woman was never happier than when surrounded by half a dozen "wee ones."

Mrs. Forsyth helped herself to a scone.

"Home-made, Mrs. Thomson? I thought so. They're lovely. Speaking about families, I was just saying to Mr. Forsyth the other night that I thought this was mebbe the happiest time of all our married life. It's awful nice to marry young and to be able to enjoy your children. I was twenty and Mr. Forsyth was four years older when we started."

"Well, well," said Mrs. Thomson. "You began young, but you've a great reason for thankfulness. How's Dr. Hugh?"

"Hugh!" said his mother, with a great sigh of pride; "Hugh's well, thanks."

"He's a cliver young man," said Mrs. Thomson. "It's wonderful how he's got on."

"Mrs. Thomson, his father just said to me this morning, '_Whit_ a career the boy's had!' At school he got every prize he could have got, and at college he lifted the Buchanan Prize and the Bailie Medal; then he got the Dixon Scholarship, and--it sounds like boasting, but ye know what I mean--the Professors fair fought to have him for an assistant, and now at his age--at his age, mind you--he's a specialist on--excuse me mentioning it--the stomach and bowels."

Everyone in the room murmured their wonder at Dr. Hugh's meteoric career, and Mrs. Macbean said generously, "You should be a proud woman, Mrs. Forsyth."

"Oh! I don't know about that. How are your girls? Is Phemie better?"

"I didn't know she was ill," said Mrs. Thomson.

Mrs. Macbean's face wore an important look, as she said with a sort of melancholy satisfaction, "Yes, she's ill, Mrs. Thomson, and likely to be ill for a long time. And you wouldn't believe how simply it began. She was in at Pettigrew & Stephens', or it might have been Copland & Lye's; anyway, it was one of the Sauchiehall Street shops, and she was coming down the stairs quite quietly--Maggie was with her--when one of the young gentlemen shop-walkers came up the stairs in a kinda hurry, and whether he pushed against Phemie, I don't know, and Maggie can't be sure; anyway, she slipped. She didn't fall, you know, or anything like that, but in saving herself she must have given herself a twist--for I'll tell you what happened."

There was something strangely appetising in Mrs. Macbean as a talker: she somehow managed to make her listeners hungry for more.

"Well, she didn't say much about it at the time. Just when she came in she said, joky-like, 'I nearly fell down the stairs in a shop to-day, Mother, and I gave myself quite a twist.' That was all she said, and Maggie passed some remark about the gentleman in the shop being in a hurry, and I thought no more about it. But about a week later Phemie says to me, 'D'ye know,' she says, 'I've got a sort of pain, nothing much, but it keeps there.' You may be sure I got the doctor quick, for I'm niver one that would lichtly a pain, as ye might say, but he couldn't find anything wrong. But the girl was niver well, and he said perhaps it would be as well to see a specialist. And I said, 'Certainly, doctor, you find out the best man and Mr. Macbean won't grudge the money, for he thinks the world of his girls.' So Dr. Rankine made arrangements, and we went to see Sir Angus Johnston, a real swell, but such a nice homely man. I could have said _anything_ to him--ye know what I mean. And he said to me undoubtedly the trouble arose from the twist she had given herself that day."

"And whit was like the matter?" asked Miss Hendry, who had listened breathless to the recital.

"Well," said Mrs. Macbean, "it was like this. When she slipped she had put something out of its place and it had put something else out of its place. I really can't tell you right what, but anyway Sir Angus Johnston said to me, 'Mrs. Macbean,' he said, 'your daughter's liver'--well, I wouldn't just be sure that it was her liver--but anyway he said it was as big as a tea-kettle."

"Mercy!" ejaculated the awed Miss Hendry, who had no idea what was the proper size of any internal organ.

"Keep us!" said Mrs. Thomson, who was in a similar state of ignorance. "A tea-kettle, Mrs. Macbean!"

"A tea-kettle," said Mrs. Macbean firmly.

"Oh, I say!" said Jessie. "That's awful!"

Mrs. Macbean nodded her head several times, well pleased at the sensation she had made.

"You can imagine what a turn it gave me. Maggie was with me in the room, and she said afterwards she really thought I was going to faint. I just kinda looked at the man--I'm meaning Sir Angus--but I could not say a word. I was speechless. But Maggie--Maggie's real bright--she spoke up and she says, 'Will she recover?' she says, just like that. And he was nice, I must say he was awful nice, very reassuring. 'Time,' he says, 'time and treatment and patience'--I think that was the three things, and my! the patience is the worst thing."

"But she's improving, Mrs. Macbean?" asked Mrs. Forsyth.

"Slowly, Mrs. Forsyth, slowly. But a thing like that takes a long time."

"Our Hugh says that the less a body knows about their inside the better," said healthy Mrs. Forsyth.

"That's true, I'm sure," agreed Mrs. Thomson. "Mrs. Forsyth, is your cup out? Try a bit of this cake."

"Thanks. I always eat an extra big tea here, Mrs. Thomson, everything's that good. Have you a nurse for Phemie, Mrs. Macbean?"

Mrs. Macbean laid down her cup, motioning Jessie away as she tried to take it to refill it, and said solemnly:

"A nurse, Mrs. Forsyth? Nurses have walked in a procession through our house this last month. And, mind you, I haven't a thing to say against one of them. They were all nice women, but somehow they just didn't suit. The first one had an awful memory. No, she didn't forget things, it was the other way. She was a good careful nurse, but she could say pages of poetry off by heart, and she did it through the night to soothe Phemie like. She would get Phemie all comfortable, and then she'd turn out the light, and sit down by the fire with her knitting, and begin something about 'The stag at eve had drunk its fill,' and so on and on and on. She meant well, but who would put up with that? D'you know, that stag was fair getting on Phemie's nerves, so we had to make an excuse and get her away. Then the next was a strong-minded kind of a woman, and the day after she came I found Phemie near in hysterics, and it turned out the nurse had told her she had patented a shroud, and it had given the girl quite a turn. I don't wonder! It's not a nice subject even for a well body. Mr. Macbean was angry, I can tell you, so _she_ went. The next one--a nice wee fair-haired girl--she took appendicitis. Wasn't it awful? Oh! we've been unfortunate right enough. However, the one we've got now is all right, and she considers the servants, and that's the main thing--not, mind you, that I ever have much trouble with servants. I niver had what you would call a real bad one. Mine have all been nice enough girls, only we didn't always happen to agree. Ye know what I mean?"