The Miss Robertsons’ garden formed a kind of oasis in the mass of mean and crowded houses which lay between the High Street and the docks; for the populous part of Kaims, where the sailors, dockmen, and fishing-people lived, stretched on every side. A wide grass-plot, which centred in a wooden seat, crept close under the drawing-room windows, and from this a few steps ran down to the walled enclosure in which flower and kitchen garden were combined. The gate at their foot was overhung by an old jessamine plant which hid the stone lintel in a shower of white stars. Round the walls were beds of simple flowering plants, made with no pretence of art or arrangement, and dug by some long-forgotten gardener who had died unsuspicious of the oppressive niceties which would, in later times, be brought into his trade. Mignonette loaded the air with its keen sweetness, pansies lifted their falsely-innocent faces, sweet-williams were as thick as a velvet-pile carpet in shades of red and white, the phlox swayed stiffly to the breeze, and convolvulus minor, most old-fashioned of flowers, seemed to have sprung off all the Dresden bowls and plates on which it had ever been painted, and assembled itself in a corner alongside the lilies of the valley. The whole of the middle part of the place was filled with apple-trees, and the earth at their feet was planted with polyanthus and hen-and-chicken daisies. At the foot of the garden a fringe of white and purple lilacs stood by the gravel path, and beyond these, outside the walls, a timber-merchant’s yard made the air noisy with the whirring of saws working ceaselessly all the week. But to-day everything was quiet, and the Miss Robertsons sat in their drawing-room expecting their company. The Edinburgh coach reached Kaims late on Saturday nights, and those who expected mails or parcels were obliged to wait for them until Sunday morning, when, from half-past one to two o’clock, the mail-office was opened, and its contents handed out to the owners. Church and kirk were alike over at the time of distribution, and the only inconvenience to people who had come in from the country was the long wait they had to endure after their respective services had ended, till the moment at which the office doors were unlocked. From time immemorial the Miss Robertsons had opened their house to their friends between church hour and mail hour, and this weekly reception was attended by such county neighbours as lived within reasonable distance of the town, and did not attend the country kirks. Their carriages and servants would be sent to wait until the office should open, while they themselves would go to spend the interval with the old ladies.