"I am just afraid she won't stay very long. There are so many pretty little houses in Priorsford, and so many kind and forthcoming landladies, it was bad luck that she should choose Hillview and Bella Bathgate. Bella is almost like a stage-caricature of a Scotswoman, so dour she is and uncompromising and she positively glories in the drab ugliness of her rooms. Ugliness means to Bella respectability; any attempt at adornment is 'daft-like.' "Pamela (she has asked me to call her that) trembles before her, and that makes Bella worse. She wants someone to stand up to her, to laugh at her grimness; she simply thinks when Pamela is charming to her that she is a poor creature. "She is charming to everyone, this lodger of Bella's. Jock and Mhor and Mrs. M'Cosh are all at her feet. She brings us books and papers and chocolates and fruit, and makes us feel we are conferring the favour by accepting them. She is a real charmer, for when she speaks to you she makes you feel that no one matters to her but just you yourself. And she is simple (or at least appears to be); she hasn't that Now-I-am-going-to-be-charming manner that is so difficult to bear. It is such fun talking to her, for she is very--pliable I think is the word I want. Accustomed to converse with people who constantly pull one up short with an 'Ah, now I don't agree,' or 'There, I think you are quite wrong,' it is wonderfully soothing to discuss things with someone who has the air of being convinced by one's arguments. It is weak, I know, but I'm afraid I agree with Mrs. M'Cosh, who described a friend as 'a rale nice buddy. She clinks wi' every word ye say.' "I am thinking to myself how Great-aunt Alison would have dreaded Pamela's influence. She would have seen in her the personification of the World, the Flesh, and the Devil--albeit she would have been much impressed by her long descent: dear Aunt Alison. "All the same, Davie, it is odd what an effect one's early training has. D'you remember how discouraged G.-A. Alison was about our levity--especially mine? She once said bitterly that I was like the ell-woman--hollow--because I laughed in the middle of the Bible lesson. And how antiquated and stuffy we thought her views, and took pleasure in assuring ourselves that we had got far beyond them, and you spent an evening tea-less in your room because you said you would rather be a Buddhist than a Disruption Worthy--do you remember that? "Yes, but Great-aunt Alison had builded better than she knew. When Pamela laughs 'How Biblical!' or says in her pretty, soft voice that our great-aunt's religion must have been a hard and ugly thing, I get hot with anger and feel I must stick unswervingly to the antiquated views. Is it because poor Great-aunt isn't here to make me? I don't know.