What had it stood for? Was it just a country of the mind?
Out here in the open, in this elemental land, it had an appropriateness that somehow lessened its strangeness. It was quite possible to believe this morning that there were places on this earth where stones might walk. Were there not places, known places, even in the Highlands where a man alone in the bright sunlight of a summer day could be invaded by the knowledge of unseen watchers, so that he was filled with a great fear and ran panic-stricken from the place? Yes, and without any previous interviews in Wimpole Street, either. In the ‘old’ places anything was possible. Even beasts that talked.
Where had B Seven got his idea of strangeness?
They launched the light boat from its wooden runway, and Grant pulled out into the loch and made for the windward end. It was much too bright, but there was a breath of air that might lift to a breeze strong enough to put a ripple on the surface. He watched Pat put his rod together and bend a fly on the line, and thought that if he could not have the felicity of possessing a son then a small red-headed cousin made a very good substitute.
‘Did you ever present a bouquet, Alan?’ asked Pat, busy with the fly. He called it ‘a bookey’.
‘Not that I can remember,’ Grant said carefully. ‘Why?’
‘They’re at me to present a bookey to a Viscountess that’s coming to open the Dalmore hall.’
‘Hall?’
‘That shed place at the cross-roads,’ Pat said bitterly. He was silent a moment, evidently mulling it over. ‘It’s an awful jessie-like thing to present a bookey.’
Grant, bound in duty to the absent Laura, searched his mind. ‘It’s a great honour,’ he said.