t."

"Indeed she can't," said Pamela. "Jock, this is the book I told you
about.... Please, Miss Jean, don't let me disturb you."

"We've finished," said Jean. "May I introduce Mr. Reid?"

Pamela shook hands and at once proceeded to make herself so charming
that Peter Reid was galvanised into a spirited conversation. Pamela had
brought her embroidery-frame with her, and she sat on the sofa and
sorted out silks, and talked and laughed as if she had sat there off and
on all her life. To Jean, looking at her, it seemed impossible that two
days ago none of them had beheld her. It seemed--absurdly enough--that
the room could never have looked quite right when it had not this
graceful creature with her soft gowns and her pearls, her
embroidery-frame and heaped, bright-hued silks sitting by the fire.

"Miss Jean, won't you sing us a song? I'm convinced that you sing Scots
songs quite perfectly."

Jean laughed. "I can sing Scots songs in a way, but I have a voice about
as big as a sparrow's. If it would amuse you I'll try."

So Jean sat down to the piano and sang "Proud Maisie," and "Colin's
Cattle," and one or two other old songs.

"I wonder," said Peter Reid, "if you know a song my mother used to
sing--'Strathairlie'?"

"Indeed I do. It's one I like very much. I have it here in this little
book." She struck a few simple chords and began to sing: it was a
lilting, haunting tune, and the words were "old and plain."

"O, the lift is high and blue,
And the new mune glints through,
On the bonnie corn-fields o' Strathairlie;
Ma ship's in Largo Bay,
And I ken weel the way
Up the steep, steep banks o' Strathairlie.

When I sailed ower the sea,
A laddie bold and free,
The corn sprang green on Strathairlie!
When I come back again,
It's an auld man walks his lane
Slow and sad ower the fields o' Strathairlie.

O' the shearers that I see
No' a body kens me,
Though I kent them a' in Strathairlie;
An' the fisher-wife I pass,
Can she be the braw lass
I kissed at the back o' Strathairlie?
O, the land is fine, fine,
I could buy it a' for mine,
For ma gowd's as the stooks in Strathairlie;
But I fain the lad would be
Wha sailed ower the saut sea
When the dawn rose grey on Strathairlie."

Jean rose from the piano. Jock had got out his books and had begun his
lessons. Mhor and Peter were under the table playing at being cave-men.
Pamela was stitchi