e front parlour with Grand-Aunt and
Miss McGinnis and helped with their sewing for the St. Giles's bazaar,
instead of appearing among them for five minutes to let them have a look
at her great splendid man, who had to bend to come in at the doorway and
give Miss McGinnis an opportunity to cry, "Dear me, Mr. Yaverland, you
mind me so extraordinary of my own cousin Hendry who was drowned at
Prestonpans. He was just your height and he had the verra look of you,"
and to allow Grand-Aunt to declare, "Elspeth, I wonder at you. There was
never a McGinnis stood more than five feet five, and I do not remember
that Hendry escaped the family misfortune--mind you, I know it's no a
fault--of a squint." There would not have been those hours in the
dining-room when life was lifted to a strange and interesting plane
where the flesh became as thoughtful as the spirit, and each meeting of
lips was as individual as an idea and as much a comment on life, and the
pressing of a finger across the skin could be watched like the unfolding
of a theory.

But those were the fair-weather uses of love. It was in the foul weather
she would have missed him most. If this woman had not given her Richard
she would have walked home from the hospital alone and wept by the
unmade bed whose pillow was still dented by mother's head; she would
have had to go to the cemetery with only Mr. Mactavish James and Uncle
John Watson from Glasgow, who would have said "Hush!" when she waved her
hand at the coffin as it was lowered into the grave and cried,
"Good-bye, my wee lamb!" Life was so terrible it would not be
supportable without love. She laid her hand on Marion's where it lay on
the table, and stuttered, "Oh, it was brave of you!"

The intimate contact was faintly disgusting to the other. She answered
impatiently, "Not brave at all; I loved him so much that I would have
done anything rather than lose him."

"You loved him--even then?"

"In a sense they are as much to one then as they ever are."

"Ah...." Ellen continued to pat the other woman's hand and looked up
wonderingly into her eyes, and was dismayed to see there that this
fondling meant nothing to her. She was not ungrateful, but for such
things her austerity had no use. All that she wanted was that assurance
for which she had already asked. Ellen was proud, and she was a little
hurt that the way in which she had proposed to pay the debt of gratitude
was not acceptable, so she held up her hand and s