"How?"
"Well, there was a rather gorgeous-looking chieftain sort of person sitting in a front pew, and I saw Maimie twisting her head all during the service to look at him."
"Yes," admitted the culprit frankly. "Put me in the neighbourhood of a kilt, and I'm a common rubberneck straight away, Mr Inglethwaite. I'm just mad to know all those cunning tartans by heart."
"The moment the service was over," continued my wife severely, "I saw her edging through the crowd in the churchyard towards the chieftain. For a moment I thought she was going to ask him his name."
"I wasn't!" declared Miss Buncle indignantly.
"No, you did worse. She got close to the unfortunate man," continued my wife to us, "and suddenly I noticed that she had in her hand one of those little books you buy at railway book-stalls in the Highlands, with patterns of all the tartans in them and the name of the clan underneath. By the time I got up to her she had found the right tartan in the book, and was matching it up against the back of the poor unconscious creature's kilt. Then she turned to me in a triumphant sort of way and simply bellowed—'M'Farlane!'"
"We shall probably be hauled up before the Kirk-session," said the Admiral. "But I wonder who Sir James Fordyce's friends can be. I know most of the people who have shootings about here, but none of them are friends of his that I can think of. We must get him to come and shoot here one day. Rather late for to-morrow's drive, but there will be another on Thursday. I wonder who his host is, though?"
"I might help you," said Robin. "An old man, you said, with his wife?"
"Yes—oldish," said Kitty.
"Was there a son with them?"