low," said Graeme, jumping up and shaking him heartily by
the hand, "that's the best bit of news I've heard since Meg said 'I
will' in the church there. She's an absolutely splendid girl, is
Hennie. Except Meg herself, I don't know any girl I admire so much.
She's as good and sweet as they make 'em, and for sound common-sense
she's a perfect gold mine."

"And you don't think--?"

"I've never heard a hint of anyone else. Like me to ask Meg? She'd be
sure to know. Girls talk of these things, you know."

"I don't know. Would it be quite--"

"Everything's fair in love and war,--proverbial, my boy. But I'm
pretty sure you've a clear field, and I congratulate you both with all
my heart. Come to think of it, she's been as dull as a ditch since you
went away"

"Really?"

"Fact! I was trying the other night to prove to her that she'd got
influenza coming on, or hay-fever, or something of the kind. She's as
different as chalk from cheese since eleven o'clock to-day. It's you,
I'll bet you a sovereign."

Charles did not respond to the offer. He sat smoking quietly and let
his thoughts run along brighter paths than they had done for days.

VII

At breakfast next morning Graeme soberly suggested to Lady Elspeth
that she should go conger-eeling with him that day. And the shrewd
brown eyes looked into his, and twinkled in response to the deep blue
and the brown ones opposite, and she said, "I mind I was just a wee
bit feather-headed myself for a while after I was married. I caught
congers before you were short-coated, my laddie, but I'm not going
catching them now."

"They are a bit rampageous when they're grown up," he admitted. "We
got one the other day about as thick round as one's leg, and it barked
like a dog and tried to bite."

"And does he make you go congering, my dear?" she asked Margaret.

"Make?" scoffed Graeme. "Make, forsooth? How little you know! I'd like
to see the man who could make that young person do anything but just
what she wishes. Why, she twists us all round her little finger
and----"

"Ay, ay! Well, discipline is good for the young, and you're just
nothing but a laddie in some things."

"I'm going to keep so all my life. So's Meg! Well, suppose we say
ormering then, if congering's too lively. Hennie Penny's an awful dab
at ormering. If you'd seen her the other night when she came home! A
tangle of vraic was an old lady's best cap in comparison--"

"And how many did I get, and how many d