Through this talk Miss Ross was dispensing tea and talking to Rowena.
"Do help me," she said. "I have never visited country houses and I don't know how to entertain. Hector laughs at me if I ask him who is to take who in to dinner. 'Let them sort themselves out,' he says, 'I'm not going to run the place like the fashionable johnnies! It's to be Liberty Hall.' But if you have guests, you must treat them with courtesy and consideration; and I'm too old to be ignorant. I don't like it."
"I think we all enjoy unconventionality sometimes," said Rowena. "If I can help you, I will; but every one seems very happy at present."
Hector's house was like himself, simple and unpretending. There was an absence of soft couches and cushions, and of all the little knick-knacks that women gather round them. Miss Ross sighed for her comfortable little Terrace home, when she encountered the blasts of air through the long draughty passages and big windows that flanked every room. She had never lived in this house; for Hector's father had taken possession of it when she and her sister were living in London; and he had kept it, till his many debts had forced him to sell it. But she valiantly tried to do her best, and she was so anxious and deferential in her efforts to please her nephew's guests, that they could not but respond to her nervous and timid advances.
That evening Di asked Rowena to come into her bedroom the last thing at night. When she did so Di planted her in an easy-chair before the fire and began to talk.
"Isn't it queer that I should be down here so soon again? Why did he ask me, I wonder? What an odd fish he is! Did you hear his butler come to him for orders for to-morrow morning. 'How many for church, sir?' he asked. 'Will the wagonette be sufficient?' And then he looked round the hall and counted us all. 'Ten,' he said, and the widow looked up sharply: 'How do you know we all mean to go?' she said. And he laughed and thrust his hands in his pockets in his Colonial way: 'Oh, everybody goes to church in my house,' he said. 'And I give notice to you all that there'll be no billiards and bridge going to-morrow. I'm going to keep Sunday as it used to be kept when I was a kid.'"
"'Of course, in Scotland, we do things still that we don't do in England,'" I put in, and then he rounded on me:
"'Why should Scotland march into heaven first? Can't you English keep to your old traditions and Faith?' I enjoy watching the faces of his guests as he talks."
"And how is it with you?" Rowena asked affectionately. "Are you happier?"
Di shrugged her shoulders.