"Do you know, Marcella," said Louis, as they went along the windy passages to her father's room in which Aunt Janet had elected to put them. "I've an extraordinary feeling that I've nothing to do with you any more. All these people—they seem to own you! You're an elusive young beggar, you know. First Kraill—I had to ask his permission to keep you. Now a whole village full!"
She shook her head and put her hand in his.
"Who's got me most, do you think?"
He answered as he thought.
There was a great spurting wood fire on the hearth in the book-room. As she looked round Marcella saw that most of the furniture left in the farm had been brought in. Jean came in, carrying a dish of scones. Andrew ran straight to her, just as Marcella used to. She explained that she had come back because the mistress was lonely without her, and she could not get used to any ways but those of the farm.
The doctor stayed to the meal. There was no bread on the table. Louis seemed surprised to see the oatcakes and the cheese and the herrings. To Marcella they were a feast of heaven. They put young Andrew in old Andrew's chair beneath the dusty pennant. He sat with his fat brown legs swinging, exceedingly conscious of their manly appearance which he compared with his father's and the doctor's, delighted to see that the doctor's old tweed knickerbockers were very much the same shape as his.
"There's bramble jelly for the boy," said Aunt Janet, who scarcely took her eyes from him for a moment. "Mrs. Mactavish sends me some every year—one pot. There's been four pots since you went away. And I've never been minded to open one. Maybe it's mouldered now."
They talked quietly; out on Lashnagar the winds began to howl; in the passages they shrieked and whined, and whistled and groaned in the chimney sending out little puffs of smoke. Up above their heads something scuttled swiftly. The little boy forgot his dignity and drew nearer to his mother.
"That's the rats, Andrew," said Aunt Janet, watching him. His mother explained that rats were a pest, to be hunted out like rabbits in Australia.
He drew away from her then and stood with his back to the fire, his hands behind.