"All the people who aren't 'in a large way,' all the dwellers in the snug little villas--most of Priorsford in fact." Jean got up to go. "Dear me, look at the time! The boys will be home from school. May I have the book you spoke of? Priorsford would be enraged if it heard me calmly discussing its faults and foibles." She laughed softly. "Lewis Elliot says Priorsford is made up of three classes--the dull, the daft, and the devout." Pamela, looking for the book she wanted to lend to Jean, stopped and stood still as if arrested by the name. "Lewis Elliot!" "Yes, of Laverlaw. D'you know him, by any chance?" "I used to know a Lewis Elliot who had some connection with Priorsford, but I thought he had left it years ago." "Our Lewis Elliot inherited Laverlaw rather unexpectedly some years ago. Before that he was quite poor. Perhaps that is what makes him so understanding. He is a sort of distant cousin of ours. Great-aunt Alison was his aunt too--at least, he called her aunt. It will be fun if he turns out to be the man you used to know." "Yes," said Pamela. "Here is the book, Jean. It's been so nice having you this afternoon. No, dear, I won't go back with you to tea. I'm going to write letters. Good-bye. My love to the boys." But Pamela wrote no letters that evening. She sat with a book on her knee and looked into the fire; sometimes she sighed. CHAPTER VIII "I have, as you know, a general prejudice against all persons who do not succeed in the world."--JOWETT OF BALLIOL. Mrs. Duff-Whalley was giving a dinner-party. This was no uncommon occurrence, for she loved to entertain. It gave her real pleasure to provide a good meal and to see her guests enjoy it. "Besides," as she often said, "what's the use of having everything solid for the table, and a fine house and a cook at sixty pounds a year, if nobody's any the wiser?" It will be seen from this remark that Mrs. Duff-Whalley had not always been in a position to give dinner-parties; indeed, Mrs. Hope, that terror to the newly risen, who traced everyone back to their first rude beginnings (generally "a wee shop"), had it that the late Mr. Duff-Whalley had begun life as a "Johnnie-a'-things" in Leith, and that his wife had been his landlady's daughter. But the "wee shop" was in the dim past, if, indeed, it had ever existed except in Mrs. Hope's wicked, wise old head, and for many years Mrs. Duff-Whalley had ruffled it in a world that asked no questions about the origin of money so obviously there.