Complete Works. Anna Buchan
laughing. She only told me because she knew I was interested in every detail of your life, and Great-aunt Alison explains a lot of things about her grand-niece."
Jean pondered on this for a little and then said:
"Pam once said I was on the verge of being a prig, and I'm not sure that she wasn't right, and it's a hateful thing to be. D'you think I'm priggish, Richard Plantagenet? Oh no, don't kiss me. I hate it…. Why do you want to behave like that? It isn't nice."
"I'm sorry, Jean."
"And now your voice sounds as if you did think me a prig … Here we are at last, and I simply don't know what to say kept us."
"Don't say anything: leave it to me. I'll be sure to think of some lie. Do you realise that we are only ten minutes behind the others?"
"Is that all?" cried Jean, amazed. "It seems like hours."
Lord Bidborough began to laugh helplessly.
"I wonder if any man ever had such a difficult lady," he said, "or one so uncompromisingly truthful?"
He rang the bell, and as they stood on the doorstep waiting, the light from the hall-door fell on his face, and Jean, looking at him, suddenly felt very low. He was going away, and she might never see him again. The fortnight he had been in Priorsford had given her an entirely new idea of what life might mean. She had not been happy all the time: she had been afflicted with vague discontents and jealousies such as she had not known before, but at the back of them all she was conscious of a shining happiness, something that illuminated and gave a new value to all the commonplace daily doings. Now, as in a flash, while they waited for the door to open, Jean knew what had caused the happiness, and realised that with her own hand she was shutting the door on the light, shutting herself out to a perpetual twilight.
"If only you hadn't been a man," she said miserably, "we might have been such friends."
A servant opened the door and they went in together.
CHAPTER XVII
"When icicles hang by the wall,
And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,
And Tom bears logs into the hall,
And milk comes frozen home in pail,
When blood is nipp'd and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
Tu whit
Tu whu, a merry note
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot."
Mhor began to look forward to Christmas whenever the days began to shorten and the delights of summer to fade; and the moment the Hallowe'en "dooking" for apples was over he and Jock were deep in preparations.
As is the way with most things, the looking forward and preparing were the best of it. It meant weeks of present-making, weeks of wrestling with delicious things like paints and pasteboard and glue. Then came a week or two of walking on tiptoe into the little spare room where the presents were stored, just to peep, and make sure that they really were there and had not been spirited away, for at Christmas-time you never knew what knavish sprites were wandering about. The spare room became the most interesting place in the house. It was all so thrilling: the pulling out of the drawer, the breathless moment until you made sure that the presents were safe, the smell that came out of the drawer to meet you, an indescribable smell of lavender and well-washed linen, of furniture polish and cedar-wood. The dressing-table had a row of three little drawers on either side, and in these Jean kept the small eatables that were to go into the stockings—things made of chocolate, packets of almonds and raisins, big sugar "bools." To Mhor a great mystery hung over the dressing-table. No mortal hand had placed those things there; they were fairy things, and might vanish any moment. On Christmas morning he ate his chocolate frog with a sort of reverence, and sucked the sugar "bools" with awe.
A caller at The Rigs had once exclaimed in astonishment that an intelligent child like the Mhor still believed in Santa Claus, and Jean had replied with sudden and startling ferocity, "If he didn't believe I would beat him till he did." Happily there was no need for such extreme measures: Mhor believed implicitly.
Jock had now grown beyond such beliefs, but he did nothing to undermine Mhor's trust. He knew that the longer you can believe in such things the nicer the world is.
The Jardines always felt about Christmas Day that the best of it was over in the morning—the stockings and the presents and the postman, leaving long, over-eaten, irritable hours to be got through before bedtime and oblivion.
This year Jock had drawn out a time-table to ensure that the day held no longueurs.
7.30 Stockings.
8.30 Breakfast.
9 Postman.
10-12 Deliver small presents to various friends.
1 Luncheon at the Jowetts'. 4 Tea at home and present-giving.
5-9 Devoted to supper and variety entertainment.
This programme was strictly adhered to except by the Mhor in the matter of his stocking, which was grabbed from the bed-post and cuddled into bed beside him at least two hours before the scheduled time; and by the postman, who did not make his appearance till midday, thereby greatly disarranging things.
The day passed very pleasantly: the luncheon at the Jowetts' was everything a Christmas meal should be, Mrs. M'Cosh surpassed herself with bakemeats for the tea, the presents gave lively satisfaction, but the feature of the day was the box that arrived from Pamela and her brother. It was waiting when the family came back from the Jowetts', standing in the middle of the little hall with a hammer and a screw-driver laid on the top by thoughtful Mrs. M'Cosh—a large white wooden box which thrilled one with its air of containing treasures. Mhor sank down beside it, hardly able to wait until David had taken off his coat and was ready to tackle it. Off came the lid, out came the packing paper on the top, and in Jock and Mhor dived.
It was really a wonderful box. In it there was something for everybody, including Mrs. M'Cosh and Peter, but Mhor's was the most striking present. No wonder the box was large. It contained a whole railway—a train, lines, signal-boxes, a station, even a tunnel.
Mhor was rendered speechless with delight. Jean wished Pamela had been there to see the lamps lit in his green eyes. Mrs. M'Cosh's beautiful tea was lost on him: he ate and drank without being aware of it, his eyes feasting all the time on this great new treasure.
"I wish," he said at last, "that I could do something for the Honourable and Richard Plantagenet. I only sent her a wee poetry-book. It cost a shilling. It was Jean's shilling really, for I hadn't anything left, and I wrote in it, 'Wishing you a pretty New Year.' I forgot about 'happy' being the word; d'you think she'll mind?"
"I think Pamela will prefer it called 'pretty,'" Jean said. "You are lucky, aren't you?—and so is Jock with that gorgeous knife."
"It's an explorer's knife," said Jock. "You see, you can do almost everything with it. If I was wrecked on a desert island I could pretty nearly build a house with it. Feel the blades——"
"Oh, do be careful. I would put away the presents in the meantime and get everything ready for the charade. Are you quite sure you know what you're going to do? You mustn't just stand and giggle."
Jean had asked three guests to come to supper—three lonely women who otherwise would have spent a solitary evening—and Mrs. M'Cosh had asked Bella Bathgate to sup with her and afterwards to witness what she dubbed "a chiraide."
The living-room had been made ready for the entertainment, all the chairs placed in rows, the deep window-seat doing duty for a stage, but Jean was very doubtful about the powers of the actors, and hoped that the audience would be both easily amused and long-suffering.
Jock and Mhor protested that they