"Indeed," said the other, smiling again. He was thinking that in that case he could not claim distinction since she had not favoured him with much of her approval. Not that it mattered, since he had quite made up his mind that during the next few weeks, before his married sister came to do hostess, Marjory would be a decided acquisition to the limited society at his command; for Paul was distinctly gregarious in his tastes. It did not take much to amuse him; but he needed some gentle interest to start the wheels of his pleasure, and that interest was, preferably, a woman. So, being able thus to combine duty and amusement by a visit to the Lodge, he calmly suggested an adjournment on the spot, to which Will agreed, blissfully oblivious of the fact that not half-an-hour before he had left his mother in the agonies of redding up the best parlour, with a view to the laird's expected visit in the afternoon. No doubt when the women of the future have won large interests for themselves, such a spectacle as Mrs. Cameron presented when she saw two tweed-clad figures lounging up the path together will be impossible. Even nowadays the attempt to describe her feelings must fall far short of the reality, since few of this generation can grasp the mental position of the last, and Mrs. Cameron belonged to the generation before that. Of far better birth than many a farmer's wife who would be ashamed at being discovered engaged in household work, Mrs. Cameron would as a rule have gloried in what was to her the sole aim and object of woman's creation; but this was no ordinary occasion; how could that be one which necessitated clean muslin curtains at a time when clean muslin curtains should not be, a cake made after her mother's original recipe baking in the oven, and a bottle of her dead husband's very best Madeira waiting to be decanted on the sideboard? She stood transfixed on the steps, in the very act of running a tape through the stiffened hem of the curtain, an operation which in itself had reduced her patience to the lowest ebb; and then, after an instant's pause, her resentment found an outlet in one expressive epithet. "The Gowk!" For it was Will's fault, of course; had not the lad been a perfect dispensation ever since he was born? (this being her favourite word for describing all the inevitable trials of her life). Besides, after the manner of most housewifely women, she always visited any failure in domestic arrangements on the head of the nearest male belonging to the family. No one but a man, no one but a man, sent to make _her_ life a burden, could have been guilty of such a disgraceful blunder, when a word, a hint, could have kept the laird from coming until the afternoon. The conviction brought a sort of martyred resignation with it, as she continued in a lower key, "and the parlour as bare as the loof o' my hand, save for the tea leaves on the drugget."