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The fortnight he had been in Priorsford had given her an entirely new idea of what life might mean. She had not been happy all the time: she had been afflicted with vague discontents and jealousies such as she had not known before, but at the back of them all she was conscious of a shining happiness, something that illuminated and gave a new value to all the commonplace daily doings.
"All the people who aren't 'in a large way, all the dwellers in the snug little villas most of Priorsford in fact." Jean got up to go. "Dear me, look at the time! The boys will be home from school. May I have the book you spoke of? Priorsford would be enraged if it heard me calmly discussing its faults and foibles." She laughed softly.
The only servant The Rigs possessed was a middle-aged woman, the widow of one Andrew M'Cosh, a Clyde riveter, who had drifted from her native city of Glasgow to Priorsford. She had a sweet, worn face, and a neat cap with a black velvet bow in front. Jock rose from the table reluctantly, and was at once hailed by the Mhor and invited on to the raft.
"Laugh!" Jean groaned. "Pamela, I must warn you that Mrs. Hope's laughter scares Priorsford to death. We speak her fair in order that she won't give us away to our neighbours, but we have no real hope that she doesn't see through us. Have we, Miss Augusta?" addressing the daughter of the house, who had just come into the room. "Ah," said Mrs. Hope, "if everyone was as transparent as you, Jean."
"What made you settle in Priorsford?" she asked. "Well, we came out first to stay at the Hydro you were away at school then and your father took a great fancy to the place. He was making money fast, and we always had a thought of buying a place. But there was nothing that just suited us.
Send me a wire when you get this. What I should like to do would be to conduct you personally to Priorsford. I think you would like it. The countryside is lovely, and after a week or two we could go somewhere for Christmas. The Champertouns have asked me to go to them, and of course their invitation would include you.
And I was there, oddly enough, when the god in the car alighted, so to speak, at The Rigs. "One afternoon, just after I came to Priorsford, I went in after tea and found the Jardines entertaining a shabby-looking elderly man. They were all so very nice to him that I thought he must be some old family friend, but it turned out that none of them had seen him before that afternoon.
She reflected dismally that he had not even a wife to be nice to him, and he was far too old to have a mother. "Are you staying in Priorsford?" she asked gently. "I'm at the Temperance Hotel for a few days. I the fact is, I haven't been well. I had to take a rest, so I came back here after thirty years." "Have you really been away for thirty years?
English Church or no English Church he'll help to marry Jean. But," turning to the bride to be, "I can hardly believe it, Jean. It's only ten days since you left Priorsford, and to-morrow you're to be married. I think it was the War that taught us such hurried ways...." She sighed, and then went on briskly: "I went to see Mrs. M'Cosh before I left.
The 'manoeuvring mamaws, as Bella Bathgate calls the ladies with daughters to marry, quite lost hope where you were concerned; you never seemed to see their manoeuvres, poor dears.... And I was so thankful, for I didn't want you to marry the modern type of girl.... But I hardly dared to hope you would come to Priorsford and love Jean at sight. It's all as simple as a fairy-tale." "Oh, is it?
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