"You will like to see the living-room," said Jean, shivering for the effect its charm might have on a potential purchaser. She led him in, hoping that it might be looking its worst, but, as if in sheer contrariness, the fire was burning brightly, a shaft of sunlight lay across a rug, making the colours glow like jewels, and the whole room seemed to hold out welcoming hands. It was satisfactory (though somewhat provoking) that the stranger seemed quite unimpressed. "You have some good furniture," he said. "Yes," Jean agreed eagerly. "It suits the room and makes it beautiful. Can you imagine it furnished with a 'suite' and ordinary pictures, and draped curtains at the windows and silver photograph frames and a grand piano? It would simply be no sort of room at all. All its individuality would be gone. But won't you sit down and rest? That hill up from the town is steep." Peter Reid sank thankfully into a corner of the sofa, while Jean busied herself at the writing-table so that this visitor, who looked so tired, need not feel that he should offer conversation. Presently he said, "You are very fond of The Rigs?" Jean came and sat down beside him. "It's the only home we have ever known," she said. "We came here from India to live with our great-aunt--first me alone, and then David and Jock. And Father and Mother were with us when Father had leave. I have hardly ever been away from The Rigs. It's such a very _affectionate_ sort of house--perhaps that is rather an absurd thing to say, but you do get so fond of it. But if I take you in to see Mrs. M'Cosh in the kitchen she will tell you plenty of faults. The water doesn't heat well, for one thing, and the range simply eats up coal, and there is no proper pantry. Your wife would want to know about these things." "Haven't got a wife," said Peter Reid gruffly. "No? Well, your housekeeper, then. You couldn't buy a house without getting to know all about the hot water and pantries." "There is no question of my buying it." "Oh, isn't there?" cried Jean joyfully. "What a relief! All the time I've been showing you the house I've been picturing us removing sadly to a villa in the Langhope Road. They are quite nice villas as villas go, but they have only tiny strips of gardens, and stairs that come to meet you as you go in at the front door, and anyway no house could ever be home to us after The Rigs--not though it had hot and cold water in every room and a pantry on every floor." "Dear me," said Peter Reid. He felt perplexed, and annoyed with himself for being perplexed. All he had to do was to tell this girl with the frank eyes that The Rigs was his, that he wanted to live in it himself, that if they would turn out at once he would make it worth their while. Quite simple--They were nice people evidently, and would make no fuss. He would say it now--but Jean was speaking.