It was after that hour when they reached Aberdeen, because David Bligh was continually stopping on the desolate roads that led across the low-lying lands between the city and the sea to illustrate with snatches of song many episodes of his adventurous life as an actor in musical comedy. Dorothy might have been bored by all this talk about himself if he had not made it so clear that he really did admire her; as it was, she assented warmly when he murmured, outside her lodgings: "How quickly one can make friends sometimes!" How quickly, indeed, when a man will show his admiration with his eyes and a woman with her ears. The others had not returned from their expedition along Deeside when tea was finished, so Dorothy and the tenor took down the photographs and china ornaments from the top of the piano, and presently an unfamiliar sound brought in Mrs. Maclachlan, the landlady, to say that the piano had not been used since her eldest daughter died ten years ago, and that she would prefer that it was not used now. This was the kind of occasion on which Dorothy missed Sylvia, who would have known how to deal with the old woman; but David Bligh, without heeding her protests, continued to strum. Mrs. Maclachlan at once put the bass clef out of action by sitting down upon the notes, where, with arms akimbo, she maintained her position and poured forth a torrent of unintelligible Scots labials. Dorothy, horrified at the idea of a brawl with a woman who, even if she did let rooms, obviously belonged to the servant class, begged the actor not to play any more. In the end he agreed to resign from the contest with Mrs. Maclachlan on condition that Dorothy would try her voice on the piano in his rooms, where he was so encouraging about its quality that she gave herself up to serious study, one result of which was that henceforth she always had the second bedroom to herself, because her voice seemed to require most exercise when Sylvia and Lily required most sleep. The other girls in the company showed no inclination to believe that Dorothy's friendship with David Bligh was founded upon his skill in voice-production and they used to declare with conscious virtue that such singing-lessons were merely an excuse for making love. "Be careful, dear, with Bligh," Fay Onslow warned Dorothy. "He's known all over the road for the way he treats girls. Look at May Seymour! Really, I'm quite sorry for the poor thing. I'm sure she's beginning to look her age."