"Oh, come away, come away!" cried Mrs. Cameron, impatiently. "Come and put it on, like a good lassie, and don't be chopping logic. It's time enough to be an angel when you've done being a girl, and you'll have more chance o' bein' one if ye make the best o' your gifts in this world, I can tell you. So come away, my dear, there may be a stitch or two a-wantin', and the time is none too long." But Marjory stood her ground even after the old lady had bustled upstairs again, and she looked so serious that Dr. Kennedy was driven into suggesting that if she preferred it, she might wear her old gown. "It is not that," she said slowly. "It is beautiful. I could see that, at a glance; but--Tom, did Mrs. Vane choose it?" His laugh had a certain content in it. "My dear child, I prefer people to be dressed as I like, and I am generally supposed to have good taste." "Very, I should say," she remarked, with a curious accent of regret in her voice. But the fact was indubitable. When she came down again in a shimmer of silver and white, set cunningly with frosted rowan berries showing a glint of scarlet here and there, she knew so well that her dress was perfect, that from a new bashfulness she turned the tables on him swiftly. "Tom," she cried, "I declare you have waxed the ends of your moustache!" "And if I had been in Italy, I should have curled my hair, too," he replied imperturbably. "It is not a crime." "And that coat! It is not your ordinary one." "It is not. The one I use here--since you are so particular--is a dress jacket; the correct thing, I assure you, for a shooting lodge. But I have the misfortune to be honorary surgeon to a potentate somewhere, who insists on brass buttons on state occasions, so I don't happen to have the intermediate affair. Besides, there are to be lord-lieutenants and generals hanging round this evening from the Oban gathering. If that is satisfactory to your highness, we should be going." "And that red thing in your buttonhole?" she persisted, going close up to him and touching the bit of ribbon with dainty curious finger. "It is the Legion of Honour, I suppose." "It is called so; you look as if that were a crime also." "I did not know you had it, that was all," she said. And then, Will, coming in full of fuss because his very occasional white tie had not been folded properly in the wash, changed the _venue_ by declaring that fine feathers make fine birds, and that he was half ashamed to belong to them. "Naethin' o' the sort, Will," snapped Mrs. Cameron. "It's the fine birds that grows the fine feathers, as ye'd see ony day o' the week if ye went to my hen yard." "And it is always the male bird which attends most to personal appearance," remarked Marjory, sedately. Yet, despite her pretended disdain, as they passed down the drawing-room corridor at Gleneira House, she paused involuntarily to look for a second at what she saw reflected in a pier glass at the end.