"Dear people!" she exclaimed, "I'm so sorry if I've kept you waiting, but I simply couldn't find a thing; and the more haste, the less speed, you know. Mr. Somerled, you've been here before in your pre-American days. Do, like an angel-man, show me the way to the dining-room. I can never get used to going in late, with a lot of people staring. Basil will take care of Barrie and Mrs. James."
I felt as if I should go mad and bite something if she were to cultivate the habit of calling me "Barrie"; but as I'd invited both her brother and Sir S. to do so, and Mrs. James had never called me anything else, I couldn't very well make Mrs. West the one exception.
A good many of the hotel guests had finished dinner by that time, but twenty or thirty were still at their tables in the big dining-room, which seemed to me absolutely palatial after my "glass retort." Evidently we were well in the thick of "tourist zone" again, judging by the look of the people, for most of them had the air of having travelled half round the world in powerful and luxurious motor-cars. You could see they weren't "local"—with four exceptions, our nearest neighbours. I thought they were pets; but Mrs. West stared in that pale-eyed way I noticed women have when they wish to express superiority or contempt.
All four of the pets were old—two very old, two elderly. The first pair wore bonnets which they must have had for years, things that perched irrelevantly on the tops of their heads, and looked entirely extraneous. The second two had something more or less of the hat tribe, and Sir S. said this was because their elders considered them girls, and granted them the right to be frivolous in order to attract the opposite sex. Mrs. West was sure that such headgear couldn't be got for love or money except in small remote Scottish towns. "Might come from Thrums," said Sir S. I'd never heard of Thrums, and Basil explained that it was a famous place in a novel, written by a man of my name, Barrie. "The real place is Kerrimuir," he went on, and promised to give me the book.
At this Sir S. glanced our way for an instant, looked as if he wanted to speak, changed his mind, and turned again to Mrs. West, next whom he sat, with Mrs. James on his other side. No wonder, I thought, he liked better to look at her than me, as she was so fresh and elaborate and charming. All through dinner he talked to Mrs. West and a little to Mrs. James, leaving Basil to entertain me, which he did very kindly. Still, Sir S. seemed annoyed because a party of young American men at a table near ours stared at me a good deal, though he didn't care to pay me any attention himself. He drew his eyebrows together and glared at them once, whereupon the nicest looking of the four (and they were all good-looking) bowed. Sir S. returned the nod stiffly, with an "I-wonder-if-I-really-do know-you,-or-if-this-is-a-trick-to-claim-acquaintance?" sort of expression.
Perhaps I ought to have been annoyed too, but I wasn't a bit. They were such nice boys, so young, and having such a glorious time! I was glad they looked at me and not at Mrs. West, and I was sure they didn't mean to be rude. Probably they'd seen mother, or her photographs, and were puzzling over the resemblance which Sir S. and Basil both say is very strong, in spite of "marked differences." Whenever we speak of her, I feel as if I could hardly wait till Monday, though at other times the present seems so enchanting I can't bear to have it turn into the past.
The American boys (I thought that none of them could be over twenty-one) lingered at their table a long time after they seemed to have finished their dinner. They played some kind of game with bent matches which made them laugh a good deal; but the minute we got up, I heard them push back their chairs, though I didn't turn my head.
Basil and I walked out of the dining-room after the rest of the party, and the boys came close behind us. I heard one say in a low voice, "Did you ever see such hair?" and I felt a sort of creep run all the way down my plait and up again into my brain, because I've been brought up to think red hair ugly, and it's hard to believe every one isn't making fun of it. However, I remembered what Sir S. said about the flame-coloured heads of the children in the road, and that stuff Basil wrote in his notebook about Circe. Then I felt better, and hoped that the boys were not laughing.
Outside the dining-room door the handsomest one got near enough to speak to Sir S. "How do you do, Mr. Somerled?" he said. "Don't you remember me? I'm Jack Morrison, Marguerite's cousin. I met you twice at Newport while you were painting her portrait."
"Marguerite Morrison. 'M. M.,' the grateful model who gave him the refrigerator basket!" thought I. And Sir S. proceeded to give the cousin a refrigerator glance; but it didn't discourage him. He went on as cordially as ever. "My three chums want to be presented: Dick Farquhar, Charlie Grant, Sam Menzies. We're all Harvard men, seeing Europe in general and Scotland in particular, in our vacation. We've every one of us got Scottish blood in our veins, so we sort of feel we've earned the right to make your acquaintance. And we've been wondering if you'd introduce us to your friends, if you don't think it's cheek of us to ask!"