The visit to Balcairnie was paid. The ladies behaved as graciously as the host was intent on rendering the visit a pleasure to his guests. Everything was propitious, even to a recent fortuitous moulting of the guinea-fowls. There was quite a heap of the clear grey and black and white spotted feathers, which Primrose called ‘second mourning feathers,’ at their fanciers’ disposal. The cherries were at their best, the curds and cream as rich and sweet as could be desired. Yellow ragwart, small pink and white convolvuluses, great purple mallows grew among last autumn’s russet stacks, which sheltered the farm-house more effectually than the fir-tree avenue sheltered the mansion of Drumsheugh. The garden was fragrant with red and white gilliflower, pink cabbage-roses and lilac lavender, and gay with orange marigolds. The kye were coming home from the pasture, the sheep were in the fauld, the pigeons were flying back to the pigeon-house as the evening drew on. The whole place looked so ‘couthie’ and sweet and bright, so home-like and cheery, that the women felt it hard it should be wasted on a single man and his servants. The hardship to her sex surprised Mrs. Forsyth into something like an aggrieved wonder that Balcairnie did not take a wife. The remark in its turn startled a deeper colour into Balcairnie’s ruddy cheeks, and provoked a laugh from Dr. Forsyth and Primrose Ramsay. At last Balcairnie found an opportunity when the party were still strolling about the garden, and Dr. Forsyth had called away his wife to examine one of the Dutch summer-houses which were then in great favour, and of which he proposed erecting a specimen in their garden at Craigie. Balcairnie and Primrose Ramsay were left sauntering along a broad box-edged walk, listening to a blackbird in a neighbouring lilac bush. Balcairnie interrupted the bird, and went to the gist of the matter and of his purpose at once. He had no notion of courtly fencing. Artful preambles were not in his way. ‘Miss Ramsay, I want to speak to you about your cousin’s lady up at Drumsheugh.’ Primrose met his request, which was more like a demand, with a look of surprise and some annoyance. She was not easily offended, but she felt vexed that this man--her cousin’s friend, whom she had begun to respect as well as to like--should introduce an unpalatable subject, one on which they could not be expected to agree, at his own place too. He was less of a gentleman--one of nature’s gentlemen--than she had been thinking him. Then she said, with a shade of distance and dryness in her manner and tone, ‘I beg your pardon, Mr. Home, but I am not acquainted with young Mrs. Ramsay, though she is my cousin’s wife.’