But here, looking from the door out of the sheltering arms of Marnhoul wood into the peace of the Valley, the ear could discern only the hum of the pirn-mill buzzing like a giant insect in the greenest of the shade, and farther off the whisper of the sea on the beaches and coves about Killantringan. Now we had taken rather a roundabout road and rested some nights on the way, for I had business at Glasgow--a great and notable professor to visit at the college, and in the library several manuscripts to consult. So Irma remained with the Wondrous Duncan the Second at the inn of the White Horse, where the coach stopped. When I came back I thought that Irma's face looked a trifle flushed. I discovered that, having asked the hostler to polish her shoes, he had refused with the rudeness common to his class when only rooms of the cheaper sort are engaged. Whereupon Irma, who would not let her temper get the better of her, had forthwith gone down to the pantry, taken the utensils and done them herself. I said not much to her, but to the landlord and especially to the man himself I expressed myself with fulness and a vigour which the latter, at least, was not likely to forget for some time. It was as well, however, that my grandmother was not there. For in that case murder might have been done, had she known of the scullion's answer and what Irma had done. Well also, on the whole, for us that she had refused to keep us company. For having been only once in a great city in her life, and never likely to be there again, Mary Lyon made the most of her time. She had had two trunks when she came to our gate. Four would not have held all that she travelled with on her way back. And when we remonstrated on the cost, she said, "Oh, fidget! 'Tis many a day since I cost anything to speak of to the goodman. He can brave and weel afford to pay for a trifle o' luggage." Accordingly she never passed a fruit stall without yearning to buy the entire stock-in-trade "for the neighbours that have never seen siccan a thing as a sweet orange in their lives--lemons being the more marketable commodity in Eden Valley." She had also as many commissions, for which she looked to be paid, as if she had been a commercial traveller. There were half-a-dozen "swatches" to be matched for Aunt Jen--cloth to supply missing "breadths," yarn to mend the toes of stockings, ribbons which would transform the ancient dingy bonnet into a wonder of beauty on the day of the summer communion. She had "patterns" to buy dress-lengths of--from the byre-lasses brown or drab to stand the stress of out-of-door--checked blue and white for the daintier dairy-worker among her sweet milk and cheese.