"Isn't her voice nice and fat?" murmured Elizabeth--"like turtle-soup." A friend espied the lady and, sailing up to the table, greeted her with "Fancy seeing you here!" and they fell into conversation. "And what kind of winter are you having?" asked one. "Fine," said the other. "Mr. Jackson's real well, his indigestion is not troubling him at all, and the children are all at school, and I've had the drawing-room done up--Wylie and Lochhead--handsome. And how are you all?" "Very well. I was just thinking about you the other day and minding that you have never seen our new house. I've changed my day to first Fridays, but just drop a p.c. and come any day." "Aren't the shops nice just now? And it's lovely to see the sun shining.... Are you going? Well, be sure you come soon. Awful pleased to have met you. Good-bye." "An example of 'wee-pleasedness,'" said Elizabeth. "I find," said Arthur, "that I like the Glasgow accent. There is something so soft and--and----" "Slushy?" she suggested. "But I know what you mean: there is a cosy feeling about it, and it is kindly. But don't you think this is a wonderfully good luncheon for one-and-sixpence?" "Quite extraordinarily good. I can't think how they do it." "An Oxford friend of Alan's once stayed with us, and the only good thing he could find to say of Glasgow was that in the tea-shops you could make a beast of yourself for ninepence." Elizabeth laid down her coffee-cup with a sigh. "I'm always sorry when meals are over," she said. "I like eating, though Mrs. Thomson would say, in her frank way, that I put good food into a poor skin--meaning that I'm a thin creature. I don't mind a bit a home--I'm quite content with what Marget gives me--but when I am, say, in Paris, where cooking is a fine art, I revel." "And so ethereal-looking!" commented Arthur. "That's why I can confess to being greedy, of course," said she. "Well, Ulysses, having seen yet another city, would you like to go home?" Arthur stooped to pick up Elizabeth's gloves and scarf which had fallen under the table, and when he gave them to her he said he would like to do some shopping, if she were agreeable. "I promised Buff a paint-box, for one thing," he said. "Rash man! He will paint more than pictures. However, shopping of any kind is a delight to me, so let's go." The paint-box was bought (much too good a one, Elizabeth pointed out, for the base uses it would almost certainly be put to), also sweets for Thomas and Billy. Then a book-shop lured them inside, and browsing among new books, they lost count of time. Emerging at last, Arthur was tempted by a flower-shop, but Elizabeth frowned on the extravagance, refusing roses for herself. In the end she was prevailed upon to accept some flowering bulbs in a quaint dish to take to a sick girl she was going to visit.