"Is the lassie thinking of the tartan?"
"Ye-es," said Iris doubtfully. "Or do I mean a plaid?"
Sir Julian felt quite unequal to enlightening her.
"I see that I shall have to teach you many things," said Mr. Garrett gloomily.
"Do you expect ever to live in Scotland?" Sir Julian enquired.
"We toilers and sowers gravitate to London instinctively. I always say," Mr. Garrett observed, in tones of great interest, "I always say that London is the modern Mecca. Pilgrims come there from all parts. It is, in many ways, a city of freedom. London, someone has said—the name of the writer has escaped my memory—is the only capital in the world where a man can eat a penny bun in the streets without exciting comment. Now, that seems to me quite extraordinarily descriptive."
It seemed to Sir Julian, on the contrary, quite extraordinarily futile, and he wished, not for the first time, that Iris would make her appeals to some other source, when she murmured in a trustful way:
"Isn't Douglas rather wonderful? You know what I mean—I think he's wonderful, sometimes. The things he says, I mean."
"We shall live in London for a time," Mr. Garrett pursued. "My journalistic work will keep me there, and then we have to think of Iris' literary career. I immensely want her to meet some of the great thinkers of the day."
Iris looked awe-stricken, clasped her hand, and said in a small, hushed voice: