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