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‘Dr. Johnson (said I), I do indeed come

from Scotland, but I cannot help it.’

Boswell.

‘You see,’ Kirsty explained, ‘the dining-room opens out of the drawing-room. It has another door, of course, which you reach by going through the hall and down a passage; that’s how we’ll go when we have a dinner-party (if ever we have one); it’s more impressive.’

She opened the dining-room door as she spoke.

‘And because the other room is such a riot of colour I’ve kept this one golden-brown.’

‘Like a beech-wood in autumn,’ said Blanche. ‘The other is like a midsummer garden.—What luck to have all this panelling!’ She walked to the window and looked out. ‘Why, what’s this stream?’

‘That,’ said Kirsty, joining her, ‘is the Hope Water—a very delectable stream.’

‘I daresay, but aren’t you a little too near it? I prophesy that some wet morning you will find the Hope Water coming in to meet you at breakfast.’

They went through the wide low-ceilinged hall and up the shallow staircase.

On the first landing Blanche paused. ‘This is really very pretty,’ she said approvingly, ‘the powder-blue carpets and the grey walls. By the way, have you electric light?’

Kirsty smiled at the notion. ‘Of course not,’ she said, and sniffed. ‘Lamps. Can’t you smell them? I always think paraffin oil is such an innocent smell. It goes with dimity and pot-pourri and faded samplers.’

‘Idiot! I never heard any one praise the smell of paraffin before. But you seem determined to be pleased with everything in your country cottage.’

‘Please, not so superior,’ Kirsty begged. ‘This is such a queer uneven house. One is always going up a few steps or down a few steps. “Upstairs and downstairs and in my lady’s chamber.” ’ She opened the door of a room all white and blue with touches of black. ‘Mine,’ she said, looking eagerly at her friend for approval. ‘I swithered between pale grey and orange, and blue and white, but I’m glad I decided on this. I do so love blue: it’s a happy colour ... and a bathroom of my own next door, made out of a dressing-room—all black-and-white-striped like peppermint rock.’

‘How amusing!’ Blanche said, sitting down on the edge of the bath and looking round. ‘Black and white walls, black and white tiled floor, black and white curtains, and rose-red rugs. This is rather clever of you, Kirsty. It would please my friend Joyce Parker. (You’ve heard me talk of her?) She has been in India for more than twenty years, and looks it, and when she was last home she told me a most mournful story of a visit she had paid to some people who have a cottage somewhere on the Thames. She had a luxurious bathroom for her own use, snow-white from floor to ceiling, with a window through which the sun streamed, and a cherry-tree in full blossom just outside. The cherry-tree was the last straw. The poor dear said she had never realised quite how faded and finished she was until that May morning, in that white bathroom with the flaunting cherry-tree outside. It quite cast a blight upon her visit.’

‘Dear me!’ said Kirsty. ‘I never thought before about a becoming bathroom. My cleverness is quite unintentional, but it is a hint to me to be tactful in details—if ever I do entertain.’

They went into Kirsty’s bedroom and sat down on the wide window-seat.

Kirsty pulled aside the chintz curtains.

‘ “The warm west-looking window-seat,” ’ she quoted, and pointed over the flower garden and across the park. ‘That, you see, is Phantasy proper. We are actually in the grounds. I suppose this is a sort of dower-house.’

Blanche knelt on the window-seat to look at the grey house among the trees.

‘And who owns the place? Are they pleasant people? Because if they aren’t, it won’t be very comfortable for you to be so near them, almost in their lap.’

‘Well,’ said Kirsty, ‘there isn’t any “they.” I mean to say the owner is a single man—Colonel Archibald Home.’

Blanche pretended to conceal an exaggerated yawn.

‘Oh, what a dull tale your life is going to be! I can see the end from the beginning. Of course you will marry Colonel Home. What is he like?’

Kirsty flicked the cord of the blind impatiently.

‘Blanche, you really are absurd. Vulgar, too. You’ve read so many silly novels on those constant voyages of yours to and from India that your mind has gone quite mushy.... I’ve never seen Colonel Home. He’s probably seventy, and crippled with gout. I gather that he has a pretty bad temper from the way the factor spoke, and his desire to make sure that I was a harmless person. I told you that I described myself as a spinster without encumbrances to satisfy him. I don’t suppose he will trouble me, and I certainly shan’t trouble him. I am too happy simply to be allowed to live in Little Phantasy.’ She stopped, and after a moment said rather wistfully, ‘You don’t know what all this means to me, you who have always had a home. It’s what I’ve dreamed of all my life, a little plain house in an old-fashioned garden near running water.... Always my life has been full of rich things—great purring cars, expensive shops, meals with out-of-season dainties, show, glitter. Now I want the exact opposite. I want life at its simplest: plain meals, no smart servants....’

Blanche nodded and patted Kirsty’s hand.

‘I know, and I’m glad your dreams have come true. I believe you are one of the people who really love simplicity. ... By the way, what kind of servants have you? That was a stern virgin who waited on us at luncheon.’

‘That was Miss Wotherspoon,’ Kirsty said.

Blanche raised surprised eyebrows. ‘Miss Wotherspoon?’

Kirsty explained. ‘You must know she isn’t an ordinary parlour-maid. She kept house for her brother, who is a minister, until he married, and then she had no home. She feels it a dreadful come-down after being mistress of a manse to come here as parlour-maid. She stipulated that I would call her “Miss.” I feel as guilty, when I see her wearing a cap, as if I had branded her as a slave.’

‘Touching, do you find it? No, but seriously, is she an educated woman?’

‘I’m afraid not, poor dear. It was only that her brother was clever and educated himself. But Miss Wotherspoon feels that her short reign in a manse so gentled her condition that she can now afford to look down on Easie Orphoot, decent woman——’

‘Who is that?’

‘Easie is the cook. She has lost three husbands; at least, two died, and one went off to Canada and has sent no address. But, as Miss Wotherspoon says (rather bitterly), “it has never ca’ed the down off her,” meaning that her losses have left her quite calm and cheerful. Easie is the most imperturbable creature in a house, large, laughing, and easy. And we have a young girl called Nellie Sym, who is supposed to help both Miss Wotherspoon and Easie. Her energy is positively destroying. The way she goes panting about her work reminds me always of a goods train coming out of a tunnel, and her words come out like small explosions, but she is a most willing child. I have nothing to complain of.—It sounds a most ridiculous thing to say, but you don’t know how envious I was when people I met travelling with Marmee regaled me with tales of their servant-troubles. I actually longed to have servant-troubles.’

‘My dear Kirsty, if any one heard you they would refuse to believe you sane. Servant-troubles are as little desired by ordinary mortals as a near view of Jerusalem-the-Golden.’

‘Yes,’ said Kirsty, ‘I know I’m daft. I was daft for a home, and now that I’ve got it I’m daft with joy. To have had no roots all my life—just a weed floating on the stream: and now to find myself at home, in Scotland! The blind fury that used to fill me when I heard people talking lightly about going to Scotland, and making jokes about the awful weather they were likely to have—mere English people who should have been thankful for the chance of seeing Scotland in any weather! What right had they to go to my Scotland at all when I was shut out?’

Blanche looked at her friend and shook her head.

‘What a child you are, Kirsty, in spite of your thirty years! You make me think of my niece Barbara, Isla’s girl—I wrote to you about Isla’s illness and death.’

‘Oh, my dear, you did. I was so dreadfully sorry for you, but I didn’t like to speak about it first—every one takes trouble differently, and I didn’t know whether you would want——’

‘I was glad of the letters you wrote me. No, I don’t care to talk about things that come very near to me, except to the one or two who understand. There were only the two of us, and distance didn’t separate us at all. I can hardly bear the thought of India without Isla’s letters. But I was with her at the end, that is something to be thankful for.... She was only thirty-five, and she had a lot to leave—three small children and her husband. What is to be done with the children I don’t know. If only it had been five years later, Tim and I would have been settled at home, and only too glad to have them.’

‘But what about the father? Doesn’t he want them?’

‘Oh, poor Alan! He is absolutely lost without Isla. She mothered him as much as she did the children. He is a charming fellow, a most likeable fellow, but he needs somebody to lean up against. He will marry again—I hope he will marry again—but one can hardly expect that he will find another Isla, and I can’t bear the thought of Isla’s children——However, what I was going to say was that your passion for Scotland is shared by my niece and nephew. Barbara and Specky love Scotland with a quite pathetic intensity, and at present they are living in Clapham with an old governess of ours who has a house on the Common. It is a pleasant, airy place, and they are most comfortable, but they regard having to live in London as a studied insult.’

‘Oh, poor lambs!’ Kirsty cried. ‘I know exactly what they feel. All those years I was at school at Eastbourne——What ages are they?’

Blanche thought for a moment. ‘Barbara must be ten, and Specky eight; and Bill—Bad Bill—is between five and six.’

‘Why is he bad?’ Kirsty asked.

‘I think because he can’t help it. No, I’m not maligning him. He really is rather a terror, old Bill. He passes over his sister and brother like a Juggernaut, leaving them flattened but furious.’

Blanche smiled as if at some recollection, and Kirsty said, ‘But why have they to live in Clapham? Where is Mr. Crawford?’

‘Oh, he couldn’t endure the house after Isla died. He has got rid of it and stored the furniture, and is now preparing to wander about the world indefinitely. You know what men are! They fly from trouble, while women sit patiently at home learning to bear it, and in Alan Crawford’s case the natural selfishness of man is complicated by the artistic temperament. You know he is an artist? No, not very good, but he has a private income.... But all this is a great waste of precious time. There are so many things I want to know. Tell me, you don’t mean to live alone, do you?’

Kirsty stopped twisting the cord of the blind.

‘Didn’t I tell you? Aunt Fanny is coming to me to-morrow evening—you just miss each other. No, I don’t suppose you ever did hear of her. She is my father’s only sister: unmarried and about sixty-five, I should think. I haven’t seen her since I was a child, but I have always kept somewhere in the back of my mind a recollection of something soft and comfortable and soothing that was Aunt Fanny. She has let her house for a year, and is going to try what living with me is like. I hope she won’t be dull. She knits a lot—white woolly things.’

‘People who knit are never dull,’ Blanche said wisely. ‘I’m glad you are to have Aunt Fanny.’ She rose to look out of the window. ‘Now tell me, please, the lie of the land. What hills are those I’m looking at?’

Kirsty rose eagerly. ‘I’ve only just learned their names. Away over there are the hills round Priorsford—Cademuir, the Black Meldon, Hundleshope. Now come to this window. D’you see that bridge? That’s where the Hope Water meets Tweed. That funny little heathery hill is called The Hill o’ Men. That plain-faced one is Ratchell. Hasn’t it a threadbare look, as if generations of school-boys had slid down it and worn off all the nap? I’m going to climb them all some day soon. And now, my great treasure’—Kirsty seized her friend’s arm in her excitement. ‘Beyond the bridge, to the right, high on the brae, a grey tower—d’you see? That is Hawkshaw Castle, and there Mary Queen of Scots once stayed. Did you ever know anything so thrilling? It’s like living in a ballad.... Over the top of the trees you can see the chimneys of the village, our village—Muirburn. Netherton, the next village, is a very absurd one, because, being itself about two miles away, it has its church in Muirburn, almost cheek-by-jowl with the other church. It complicates matters very much, for, as Easie puts it, “They are baith one sex.” Then there is a tiny Episcopal church, St. Mark’s, which is worked by the Priorsford rector. So you see there is a plethora of kirks.’

‘Which will you go to?’ Blanche asked.

‘Not to the Episcopal, anyway. I have bowed long enough in the House of Rimmon. The choice lies between Muirburn and Netherton. The latter has a pipe-organ and a large and very urbane minister, called the Rev. Norman M’Candlish, B.D. He and his wife have already called. The Muirburn church has only a squeaky harmonium, and is altogether much less genteel. But the minister, a long lean lad called Brand, fought all through the War, and he hasn’t called on me, so I think I shall go there. Imagine, three ministers and no doctor. They seem to expect one to be more soul-sick than body-sick. The nearest doctor is at Priorsford, nine miles away.’

‘And what about neighbours?’ Blanche asked.

‘There are some, I think,’ Kirsty said vaguely, ‘but I haven’t seen any of them yet. After all, we only got into the house a fortnight ago: there was so much that needed doing. The house is ready for callers now, but I must tackle the garden seriously. I’ve great schemes....’ She gave a long sigh of content.

About nine-thirty that evening, sitting by the fire in the lamp-lit drawing-room, Kirsty broke a silence with: ‘We’ve talked ourselves almost hoarse—there was need, when the talk must last us two years!—but there is something else I want badly to say—and I don’t know how to say it.’

She left her chair and knelt on the hearth-rug before her friend. ‘I’m so afraid you will think me pushing and impertinent. You won’t, will you, Blanche? It’s about your sister’s children, Barbara and her brothers. The idea leapt into my mind this afternoon, and the more I think of it the better I like it. Why should they stay in Clapham with strangers all summer when I am here with a house and garden that cry aloud for children? Do you know there are bars on the windows in one of the bedrooms?—the one that is called “The Stable,” because it is papered with pictures of horses. Bad Bill would like them, I’m sure. It would be better for the children to be in the country, and it would make Little Phantasy perfect for me.... Of course I know you must consult Mr. Crawford, but please, please try to get him to give the plan his favourable consideration.’

Mrs. Cunningham at first looked perplexed, then she laughed. ‘Kirsty, you are sitting there like a wistful dog. I expect all your life you will beg humbly for what no one else would take as a gift. Who but you would want to be bothered by three troublesome children? (You didn’t think I was hinting, did you?—for such a thing never entered into my head.) I’m afraid you don’t realise what you are offering. It is all very well to see children for an hour when they are at their best; but having them planted on you for months is quite another thing. They have a good governess—quite a young girl but wise—but even so, I’m afraid you’d get very weary of them.’

Kirsty gave a laugh that was almost a sob.

‘Well, all I ask is a chance to weary of them.... I’ve planned it all, indeed I’ve thought of little else since you told me of them. Barbara will have the primrose room next to mine, and we’ll have two little beds put into the Stable for Specky and Bill. The governess will have the pink room. That just fills up the house nicely. Aunt Fanny, of course, has the only really imposing room, being Aunt Fanny.... Oh, it isn’t fair that I should be so happy, and that you, poor Blanche, should have to go away out to India at almost the worst time of year. But you are going to Tim.’

‘And,’ said Blanche, ‘I’ll probably get nothing but abuse from Tim for coming. He will be sure to say that he is perfectly well, and that I was an idiot to worry.’

At that moment the door opened and Miss Wotherspoon entered, wearing her usual ill-used expression and carrying a kettle. She laid the kettle on the hearth and left the room, appearing again with a tray which she put on a table beside Kirsty. Then she sighed deeply and said:

‘Easie says Davidson’s forgot the sponge-cakes the day, and the cart’ll not be round again till Tuesday.’

Kirsty glanced at the tray.

‘Oh well, there’s one for to-night, anyway,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Good-night, Miss Wotherspoon. I hope your headache is gone.’

Miss Wotherspoon rocked a little as she stood, making her slippers creak dolorously.

‘Ma head’s worse than ever. I don’t suppose I need go to ma bed to-night, for I’ll never sleep a wink. But I’m used to suffering.... Good-night, Miss Gilmour. Good-night, Mrs. Cunningham.’

‘Good-night, Miss Wotherspoon.’

Kirsty shook her head as the door closed behind the gloomy retainer.

‘She always says she never sleeps. I wonder.’

She put the kettle on the fire, and measured some tea from a little silver tea-caddy into the pot.

‘Here’s the cup of weak China tea that I know you like at night, Blanche. Anything to eat?’

‘No, thank you. The tea is delicious. Aren’t you having any?’

‘This is what I have every night—a glass of hot water and a sponge-cake. I began it when I came here, and I love it. Priorsford sponge-cakes are divine. I can hardly forgive Davidson for forgetting to bring them in his cart to-day.’

She took a bite of sponge-cake and waved her glass at Blanche.

‘You can think of me when you are in the Gorgeous East, sitting happily at my own fireside drinking hot water and eating sponge-cakes and....’

‘And living for others,’ Blanche put in drily.

‘Oh well,’ said Kirsty, and was silent for a minute.

‘You needn’t think,’ she went on, ‘that I would consider having the children living for others. It’s pure selfishness makes me want them; they would be such a delight to me. Blanche, I’m going to be so happy.’

Mrs. Cunningham looked rather sadly at her friend.

‘My dear, I hope so. I do hope so. But I’m afraid you think now that you are free and in Scotland that the millennium has come. It hasn’t. People can be just as selfish and tiresome and ungrateful in Muirburn as in any other place. Little Phantasy, charming as it is, won’t be a serpentless Eden. Don’t expect too much, and don’t try to do too much for people.’

‘Oh,’ groaned Kirsty, ‘what depressing advice!’

Blanche sipped her tea and looked into the fire.

‘I don’t believe,’ she said darkly, ‘that people like being lived for.’