Stewart Stevenson looked about for a way of escape, but he was hemmed round by living walls and without doing violence he could not leave his seat. Mrs. Thomson sat before him in a creaking cane chair listening to praise of her drawing-room from Jessie's dowdy friend, Miss Hendry.
"My! Mrs. Thomson, it's lovely! Whit a carpet—pile near up to your knees!"
"D'ye like the colouring, Miss Hendry?" asked Mrs. Thomson.
Miss Hendry looked round at the yellow walls and bright gilt picture frames shining in the strong incandescent light.
"Mrs. Thomson," she said solemnly, "it's chaste!"
Mrs. Thomson sighed as if the burden of her magnificence irked her, then: "How d'ye think the evening's goin'?" she whispered.
"Very pleasant," Miss Hendry whispered back, "What about a game?"
"I don't know," said poor Mrs. Thomson. "I would say it would be the very thing, but mebbe Jessie wouldn't think it genteel."
A girl stood up beside the piano with her violin, and somebody said "Hush!" loudly, so Mrs. Thomson at once subsided, in so far as a very stout person can subside in an inadequate cane chair, and composed herself to listen to Scots airs very well played. The familiar tunes cheered the company wonderfully; in fact, they so raised Mr. Taylor's spirits that, to Jessie's great disgust, and in spite of the raised eyebrows of the Simpsons, he pranced in the limited space left in the middle of the room and invited anyone who liked to take a turn with him.
"Jolly thing a fiddle," said Stewart Stevenson cheerily to Miss Muriel Simpson.