What more natural than in a few moments Ena and her friend were chatting affably with the new-comer.
"This is my first visit to Scotland," Ena declared, though it was a falsehood, "and I'm delighted with it. My views—those of a Londoner—have entirely altered concerning Scotland and the Scottish people. I don't agree now with the ridicule cast upon them."
"I'm very glad of that," declared Mr. Greig. "In the south you don't really understand us, I think. And perhaps we here don't quite understand you. National prejudices are very hard to break down."
"They are. But you see the majority of the English never come north. They view the Scottish people by the ridicule cast upon them by performers on our music-halls. It is unfortunate, but it is a fact."
"Never mind," laughed the pleasant-faced man from Glasgow. "Our national pride is never hurt by those amblers on the stage who wax fat upon the profits of their mimicry. We only laugh at it up here, I assure you," he declared to Mrs. Pollen.
The conversation drifted naturally to the fact that Mrs. Morrison told him her name, which was Scottish, and the identity of her late husband, so well known in Glasgow.
"Oh! I knew your husband quite well, Mrs. Morrison," declared John Greig, for no shrewder or more well-informed person was there between the Lowlands and Cromarty. "I knew him twenty years ago. Do you recollect Mr. Buchanan, who had an office in St. Vincent Street, Glasgow, and with whom he went into partnership? Mr. Buchanan died about four years ago. I went to visit him once at that beautiful house of his on Loch Rannoch."
"Then you knew Mr. Buchanan!" cried Mrs. Morrison. "He was a dear fellow. My husband was devoted to him. Together they built up the works."
"I know. Everyone in commercial circles in Glasgow knows how closely they worked together, and, Mrs. Morrison, I may tell you that not a worker on the Clyde has any but good words for your husband and his partner. The conditions of work in your husband's place at Govan were always ideal. We hear much of labour trouble in these post-bellum days, but if all works were like your husband's there would be little to grumble at."
"It is awfully good of you to pay such a tribute to my husband's regard for his employees," said Mrs. Morrison, much gratified. "He and I often discussed their welfare, and I always agreed with him that labour should be duly paid and there should be no sweating. We have Socialist propaganda on the Clyde to-day, but is it at all astonishing in view of the high prices, of Government muddle and waste, and the advancement into society by the King's favour in the shape of 'honours' of bare-faced swindlers and those who escape under the more euphonious name of profiteers?"