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uld write what he was too shy and awkward to say: he could call down blessings on his sister in a letter, when face to face with her he would have been dumb. Pamela, on hearing the news, rushed down from London to congratulate Jean and her Biddy in person. She was looking what Jean called "fearfully London," and seemed in high spirits. "Of course I'm in high spirits," she told Jean. "The very nicest thing in the world has come to pass. I didn't think there was a girl living that I could give Biddy to without a grudge till I saw you, and then it seemed much too good to be true that you should fall in love with each other." "But," said Jean, "how could you want him to marry me, an ordinary girl in a little provincial town?--he could have married _anybody_." "Lots of girls would have married Biddy, but I wanted him to have the best, and when I found it for him he had the sense to recognise it. Well, it's all rather like a fairy-tale. And I have Lewis! Jean, you can't think how different life in London seems now--I can enjoy it whole-heartedly, fling myself into it in a way I never could before, not even when I was at my most butterfly stage, because now it isn't my life, it doesn't really matter, I'm only a stranger within the gates. My real life is Lewis, and the thought of the green glen and the little town beside the Tweed." "You mean," said Jean, "that you can enjoy all the gaieties tremendously because they are only an episode; if it was your life-work making a success of them you would be bored to death." "Yes. Before I came to Priorsford they were all I had to live for, and I got to hate them. When are you two babes in the wood going to be married? You haven't talked about it yet? Dear me!" "You see," Jean said, "there's been such a lot to talk about." "Philanthropic schemes, I suppose?" Jean started guiltily. "I'm afraid not. I'd forgotten about the money." "Then I'm sorry I reminded you of it. Let all the schemes alone for a little, Jean. Biddy will help you when the time comes. I see the two of you reforming the world, losing all your money, probably, and ending up at Laverlaw with Lewis and me. I don't want to know what you talked about, my dear, but whatever it was it has done you both good. Biddy looks now as he looked before the War, and you have lost your anxious look, and your curls have got more yellow in them, and your eyes aren't like moss-agates now; they are almost quite golden
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