"Did you ever meet a millionaire who skulked round pretending he was as poor as Job?" he enquired, with a whimsical air—"I never did!"
"Well no, I never did, either!" And Reay's mellow laughter was so loud and long that Mary was quite infected by it, and laughed with him—"But you see millionaires are all marked men. Everybody knows them. Their portraits are in all the newspapers—horrid-looking rascals most of them!—Nature doesn't seem to endow them with handsome features anyway. 'Keep your gold, and never mind your face,'—she seems to say—'I'll take care of that!' And she does take care of it! O Lord! The only millionaire I ever saw in my life was ugly enough to frighten a baby into convulsions!"
"What was his name?" asked Helmsley.
"Well, it wouldn't be fair to tell his name now, after what I've said!" laughed Reay—"Besides, he lives in America, thank God! He's one of the few who have spared the old country his patronage!"
Here a diversion was created by the necessity of serving the tiny but autocratic Charlie with his usual "dish of cream," of which he partook on Mary's knee, while listening (as was evident from the attentive cocking of his silky ears) to the various compliments he was accustomed to receive on his beauty. This business over, they rose from the tea-table. The afternoon had darkened into twilight, and the autumnal wind was sighing through the crannies of the door. Mary stirred the fire into a brighter blaze, and drawing Helmsley's armchair close to its warm glow, stood by him till he was comfortably seated—then she placed another chair opposite for Reay, and sat down herself on a low oaken settle between the two.
"This is the pleasantest time of the day just now,"—she said—"And the best time for talking! I love the gloaming. My father loved it too."
"So did my father!" and Reay's eyes softened as he bent them on the sparkling fire—"In winter evenings when the darkness fell down upon our wild Highland hills, he would come home to our shieling on the edge of the moor, shaking all the freshness of the wind and the scent of the dying heather out of his plaid as he threw it from his shoulders,—and he would toss fresh peat on the fire till it blazed red and golden, and he would lay his hand on my head and say to me: 'Come awa' bairnie! Now for a bogle story in the gloamin'!' Ah, those bogle stories! They are answerable for a good deal in my life! They made me want to write bogle stories myself!"
"And do you write them?" asked Mary.
"Not exactly. Though perhaps all human life is only a bogle tale! Invented to amuse the angels!"
She smiled, and taking up a delicate piece of crochet lace, which she called her "spare time work," began to ply the glittering needle in and out fine intricacies of thread, her shapely hands gleaming like alabaster in the fire-light reflections.