"Birkshaw was very nice, and the Miss Scotts are exactly the kind of hostesses I thought they would be. When I saw my room I was sure of it. Some people's spare rooms are just free-coups full of pictures that nobody else will allow in their rooms, chairs that are too hard for anything but a guest to sit on, books that no one can read. And in these spare rooms you generally find a corner of the wardrobe reserved for somebody's parasols, and a fur coat in camphor occupies the only really good drawer. My room at Birkshaw was a treasure. There was a delicious old four-post bed, with a little vallance of chintz round the top, and all the rest of the furniture in keeping. A nosegay on the dressing-table, a comfortable couch drawn up to a blazing fire, a table with a pile of most readable-looking books, and absolutely unencumbered drawers. There were only three other people staying in the house--a man and his daughter--Barnes was the name--English. Mr. Barnes was very sprightly, and looked about fifty, and so, oddly enough, did his daughter. Either she looked very old for her age or her father looked much too young for his. She was a dull little lady with protruding eyes and unbecoming clothes, and she appeared to me rather to have given up the unequal contest. I have noticed--haven't you?--that very vivacious parents have often depressed offspring, and _vice versa_. Mr. Barnes, though English, was a great lover of Scotland, and an ardent Jacobite. He confused me a good deal by talking about Charles III. I found him very interesting, but I had the feeling that he thought poorly of my intelligence. And, of course," Ann finished cheerfully, "I am almost entirely illiterate." Mrs. Douglas looked mildly indignant. "Ann, when I think of the money spent on your education----" "Oh, you spent money all right, but no one could make me learn when I didn't want to. I don't know whether I was naturally stupid, or whether it was sheer wickedness, but, anyway, it doesn't matter now, except that intelligent people are bored with me sometimes----" "Who was the other person staying at Birkshaw? Didn't you say there were three?" "Yes, a bachelor nephew of the Miss Scotts'--Mr. Philip Scott." "Young?" Ann screwed her face. "Youngish. Forty or thereabouts--forty-five, I should think. Oh yes, because he told me he was thirty-eight when the war came. He looked quite young because he was slim, and he wasn't bald; rather a good-looking man." "Did you like him? Was he nice?" Ann laughed as if at the remembrance of something pleasant.