Marcus said some hours, but Diana didn’t mind how many. The people at the stations interested her; the barefooted, sandy-haired, freckled boys, the barefooted, shy, proud little girls; fisherwomen, old and young, pretty and pretty once upon a time—long ago. She loved the shivering pointers and setters—shivering with excitement only—she knew that—waiting while their masters and men disinterred deeply buried luggage. Stalwart keepers meeting parties interested her and she knew she witnessed the meeting of old friends. She loved the keepers and wondered if Marcus and she would have a nice one of their own? What a thing it is to own for even two months a Scotch keeper! Marcus assured her all keepers in Scotland were nice. They were a race apart—a race of fine gentlemen.
“Darlings,” said Diana; “it’s a heavenly place.” Then she wondered what Glenbossie would be like? And Marcus knew exactly. It would be a smallish house—stucco, whitewashed; it might have a tropæolum growing over the porch. The woodwork of the house would be painted a clarety brown; there might be strings of convolvulus up the walls, and there would be pegs on which to lay the fishing-rods under the sloping roof.
“It will be a lodge,” said Diana with some anxiety; “not a proper house?”
“A lodge, of course; certainly not a proper house.”
“It would be horrible if it were a proper house.”
“Uncanny, positively,” agreed Marcus.
“You will love being uncomfortable, won’t you?” asked Diana.
Marcus looked anxious, but smiled as he said, “Yes, of course”; for he knew his Oven and his Pillar.
Pillar came along the train at most stations to tell Mr. Maitland it looked like fine weather and that the luggage was in at the front.
Mrs. Oven never moved. Her heart was sick for her London kitchen and all it contained—its electrical contrivances. She didn’t look forward except with dismay to a lodge that was not a proper house. But going to Scotland was an act of madness committed by the best families and it was very expensive. She knew, of course, that people who live in Scotland, whose homes are there, live in the greatest comfort, that the best cooks come from Scotland; it is only of those people who go from England for two months and live in places they would never think of living in in England, and paying enormous sums to do so, she was thinking.