"Pamela, can you really marry a fool like me? ... It's my fault that we've missed so much, but thank God we haven't missed everything. I think I could make you happy. I wouldn't ask you to stay at Laverlaw for more than a month or two at a time. We would live in London if you wanted to. I could stick even London if I had you." Pamela looked at him with laughter in her eyes. "And you couldn't say fairer than that, my dear. No, no, Lewis. If I marry you we'll live at Laverlaw I love your green glen already; it's a place after my own heart. We won't trouble London much, but spend our declining years among the sheep--unless you become suddenly ambitious for public honours and, as Mrs. Hope desires, enter Parliament." "There's no saying what I may do now. Already I feel twice the man I was." They talked in the firelight and Pamela said: "I'm not sure that our happiness won't be the greater because it has come twenty years late. Twenty years ago we would have taken it pretty much as a matter of course. We would have rushed at our happiness and swallowed it whole, so to speak. Now, with twenty lonely, restless years behind us we shall go slowly, and taste every moment and be grateful. Years bring their compensation.... It's a funny world. It's a _nice,_ funny world." "I think," said Lewis, "I know something of what Jacob must have felt after he had served all the years and at last took Rachel by the hand--" "'Served' is good," said Pamela in mocking tones. But her eyes were tender. CHAPTER XXIII "It was high spring, and, all the way Primrosed and hung with shade...." HENRY VAUGHAN. "There is no private house in which people can enjoy themselves so well as at a capital tavern.... No, Sir, there is nothing which has yet been contrived by man by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn."--DR. JOHNSON. Pamela and David between them carried the day, and a motor-car was bought. It was not the small useful car talked about at first, but one which had greatly taken the fancy of the Jardine family in the showroom--a large landaulette of a well-known make, upholstered in palest fawn, fitted with every newest device, very sumptuous and very shiny. They described it minutely to Pamela before she went with them to see it and fix definitely. "It runs beautifully," said David. "It's about fifty horse-power," said Jock. "And, Honourable," said Mhor, "it's got electric light inside, just like a little house, and all sorts of lovely things--a clock and--" "And, I suppose, hot and cold water laid on," said Pamela. "The worst thing about it," Jean said, "is that it looks _horribly_ rich--big and fat and purring--just as if it were saying, 'Out of the way, groundlings' You know what an insolent look big cars have." "Your small deprecating face inside will take away from the effect," Pamela assured her; "and you need a comfortable car to tour about in. When do you go exactly?"