are bad, and her long upper lip very quelling; but she's really the
kindest soul on earth.... Would you come in to tea this afternoon? Mrs.
M'Cosh--that's our retainer--bakes rather good scones. I would ask you
to stay to luncheon, but I'm afraid there mightn't be enough to go
round."

Pamela gratefully accepted the invitation to tea, and said as to
luncheon she was sure Miss Bathgate would be awaiting her with a large
dish of stewed steak and carrots saved from the night before--so she
departed.

* * * * *

Later in the day, as Miss Bathgate sat for ten minutes in Mrs. M'Cosh's
shining kitchen and drank a dish of tea, she gave her opinion of the
lodger.

"Awfu' English an' wi' a' the queer daft ways o' gentry. 'Oh, Miss
Bathgate,' a' the time. They tell me Miss Reston's considered a beauty
in London. It's no' ma idea o' beauty--a terrible lang neck an' a wee
shilpit bit face, an' sic a height! I'm fair feared for ma gasaliers.
An' forty if she's a day. But verra pleasant, ye ken. I aye think there
maun be something wrang wi' folk that's as pleasant as a' that--owre
sweet to be wholesome, like a frostit tattie! ... The maid's ca'ed Miss
Mawson. She speaks even on. The wumman's a fair clatter-vengeance, an' I
dinna ken the one-hauf she says. I think the puir thing's _defeecient_!"

CHAPTER IV

" ... Ruth, all heart and tenderness
Who wept, like Chaucer's Prioress,
When Dash was smitten:
Who blushed before the mildest men,
Yet waxed a very Corday when
You teased the kitten."

AUSTIN DOBSON.

Before seeking her stony couch at the end of her first day at
Priorsford, Pamela finished the letter begun in the morning to her
brother.

* * * * *

" ... I began this letter in the morning and now it is bedtime. Robinson
Crusoe is no longer solitary: the island is inhabited. My first visitors
arrived about 11 a.m.--a small boy and a dog--an extremely good-looking
little boy and a well-bred fox-terrier. They sat on the garden wall
until I invited them in, when they ate chocolates and biscuits, and the
boy offered to repeat poetry. I expected 'Casabianca' or the modern
equivalent, but instead I got the song from Hippolytus, 'O take me to
the Mountains, O.' It was rather surprising, but when he invited me to
go with him to his home, which is next door, it was more surprising
still. Instead of finding another small villa lik