hear
that Biddy is in London. He wired from Port Said that he would come
straight to Priorsford. I wonder whether I should take rooms for him in
the Hydro, or in one of these nice old hotels in the Nethergate? I wish
I could crush him into Hillview, but there isn't any room, alas!"

"I wish," said Jean, and stopped. She had wanted in her hospitable way
to say that Pamela's brother must come to The Rigs, but she checked the
impulse with a fear that it was an absurd proposal. She was immensely
interested in this brother of Pamela's. All she had heard of him
appealed to her imagination, for Jean, cumbered as she was with domestic
cares, had an adventurous spirit, and thrilled to hear of the perils of
the mountains, the treks behind the ranges for something hidden, all the
daring escapades of an adventure-loving young man with time and money at
his disposal. She had made a hero of Pamela's "Biddy," but now that she
was to see him she shrank from the meeting. Suppose he were a
supercilious sort of person who would be bored with the little town and
the people in it. And the fact that he had a title complicated matters,
Jean thought. She could not imagine herself talking naturally to Lord
Bidborough. Besides, she thought, she didn't know in the least how to
talk to men; she so seldom met any.

"I expect," she broke out after a silence, "your brother will take you
away?"

"For Christmas, I think," said Pamela, "but I shall come back again. Do
you realise that I've been here two months, Jean?"

"Does it seem so short to you?"

"In a way it does; the days have passed so pleasantly. And yet I seem to
have been here all my life; I feel so much a part of Priorsford, so akin
to the people in it. It must be the Border blood in my veins. My mother
loved her own country dearly. I have heard my aunt say that she never
felt at home at Bidborough or Mintern Abbas. I am sure she would have
wanted us to know her Scots home, so Biddy and I are going to
Champertoun for Christmas. My mother had no brothers, and everything
went to a distant cousin. He and his wife seem friendly people and they
urge us to visit them."

"That will mean a lovely Christmas for you," Jean said.

Here Mhor stopped being an Athenian reveller to ask that the sofa might
be pushed back. The scene was now the palace of Theseus, and Mhor, as
the Prologue, was addressing an imaginary audience with--"Gentles,
perchance you wonder at this show."

Pamela and Jean rem