"You don't mean to say it's luncheon time already? I've taken up your whole morning."
"It has been perfectly delightful," Jean assured her. "Do stay a long time at Hillview and come in every day. Don't let Bella Bathgate frighten you away. She isn't used to letting her rooms, and her manners are bad, and her long upper lip very quelling; but she's really the kindest soul on earth…. Would you come in to tea this afternoon? Mrs. M'Cosh—that's our retainer—bakes rather good scones. I would ask you to stay to luncheon, but I'm afraid there mightn't be enough to go round."
Pamela gratefully accepted the invitation to tea, and said as to luncheon she was sure Miss Bathgate would be awaiting her with a large dish of stewed steak and carrots saved from the night before—so she departed.
* * * * *
Later in the day, as Miss Bathgate sat for ten minutes in Mrs. M'Cosh's shining kitchen and drank a dish of tea, she gave her opinion of the lodger.
"Awfu' English an' wi' a' the queer daft ways o' gentry. 'Oh, Miss Bathgate,' a' the time. They tell me Miss Reston's considered a beauty in London. It's no' ma idea o' beauty—a terrible lang neck an' a wee shilpit bit face, an' sic a height! I'm fair feared for ma gasaliers. An' forty if she's a day. But verra pleasant, ye ken. I aye think there maun be something wrang wi' folk that's as pleasant as a' that—owre sweet to be wholesome, like a frostit tattie! … The maid's ca'ed Miss Mawson. She speaks even on. The wumman's a fair clatter-vengeance, an' I dinna ken the one-hauf she says. I think the puir thing's defeecient!"
CHAPTER IV
" … Ruth, all heart and tenderness
Who wept, like Chaucer's Prioress,
When Dash was smitten:
Who blushed before the mildest men,
Yet waxed a very Corday when
You teased the kitten."
AUSTIN DOBSON.
Before seeking her stony couch at the end of her first day at Priorsford, Pamela finished the letter begun in the morning to her brother.