"Mother," said Ann solemnly, "I utterly refuse to have anything to do with your matchmaking efforts. Just let your mind dwell for a little on the result of your last." Mrs. Douglas sighed. "Poor George Reid! But it wasn't marrying killed him. He couldn't have got a better wife than Jeanie Robb. The doctors said the trouble had been going on for a long time, and, anyway, the last months of his life were as comfortable as they could be made. If he hadn't married he would have been dependent on _fremt_ women, for he hadn't a soul of his own; and Jeanie gets the Widows' Fund, so you can't regret the marriage having taken place." "Practical woman!" laughed Ann. "But we must get on with your own wedding now--we are making no progress at all. When I think of what Hugh Walpole or Compton Mackenzie can make out of somebody's childhood, I blush for my few bald sentences. About your wedding--did my grandmother choose your things? When I knew her she took very little interest in clothes, just wore whatever was brought to her." "Ah, but she wasn't always like that. I remember Agatha and myself almost in tears begging her not to get a purple silk dress and bonnet which she much desired, as we thought them absurdly youthful for her years. Poor body! I don't believe she was more than forty. Daughters can be very unfeeling." "They can," Ann agreed, with a twinkle. "My poor grandmother! What a shame to deprive her of her purple silk! If you and Aunt Agatha could have looked forward forty years and seen grandmothers with dresses almost to their knees, dancing, playing tennis, frivolling, hardly recognisable from the eighteen-year-olds, I wonder what you would have thought. Well, who did buy your trousseau? Aunt Agatha?" "No, she was less sophisticated even than I was. My stand-by was Miss Ayton. My mother trusted her judgment and her taste and asked her help, and Miss Ayton was only too willing to give it; for, spinster of fifty as she was, she loved a marriage. She was one of those delightful women who can be vividly interested in their neighbours' business without ever being a nuisance, and she presided like a stout, benign fairy over my nuptials, getting things done, it seemed, by a wave of her wand." Mrs. Douglas let her knitting fall on her lap, and lay back in her chair, smiling. "First I was whisked off to Edinburgh to have some lessons in cooking (I knew absolutely nothing about anything). _High-class_ cooking it was called, I suppose because nearly every recipe called in the most casual way for a dozen of eggs and a bottle of sherry. Not the sort of cooking required for a manse, you will say...."