“You always do that,” Nasmyth declared.
She joined him outside in another minute and seated herself in the chair he drew out. The house was small and irregularly built, and a glass roof supported on light pillars stretched along part of the front. A half-moon hung above a ridge of dark fir wood, a tarn gleamed below, and here and there down a shadowy hollow there was a sparkle of running water. On the other side of the dale the moors stretched away, waste and empty, toward the half-seen hills. The loneliness of the prospect reminded Nasmyth of Canada, and the resemblance grew more marked when the crying of plover rose from the dim heath—it brought back the call of the loon. Still, he did not wonder why Millicent, an orphan with ample means, lived alone except for her elderly companion on the desolate Border.
“You don’t mind, I know,” he said as he lighted a cigar.
“I can make that concession willingly,” she answered with a smile. “I suppose I’m old-fashioned, because I go no farther.”
“Keep so,” advised Nasmyth. “Of course, that’s unnecessary; but I never could make out why women should want to smoke. From my point of view, it isn’t becoming.”
He was putting off a task from which he shrank, and she indulged him.
“One retains one’s prejudices in a place like this,” she said. “I felt sadly left behind when I was last in London; and the few visits I made in the home counties a little while ago astonished me. Nobody seemed to stay at home; the motors were continually whirling them up to town and back; the guests kept coming and going. There was so much restlessness and bustle that I was glad to be home again.”
“It has struck me,” returned Nasmyth with an air of sage reflection, “that we who live quietly in the country are the pick of the lot. Sounds egotistical, doesn’t it? But if we don’t do much good—and I’m afraid I don’t, anyway—neither do we do any harm.”
“I’m not sure that that’s a great deal to be proud of.”
“I didn’t include you,” Nasmyth assured her. “There have been wholesome changes in the village since you grew up and made your influence felt. And that leads to a question: How does Clarence get on with his tenants and the rank and file? George understood them, but they’re difficult folks to handle.”