circumstances whatever; so I suppose this big chauffeur, whose name is
Vedder, must be very well trained indeed. He is a strange looking man,
but very smart, and, being a Cockney, carefully puts all his "h's" in
the wrong place. If he forgets to do this, he goes back and pronounces
the word over again. He travelled to America from London to be Mr.
Somerled's coachman years ago, and then he learned how to drive a
motor-car and be a mechanic, because he couldn't bear to have his master
tearing over the earth with any one else. Mr. Somerled told me all this,
coming from the railway station, when he was bringing me to Moorhill
Farm.

Mr. Norman saw us off, and was very cast down as Mr. Somerled's luggage
was put on the car, but he was so loyal to his sister, that he would not
say much except, "I'm sorry!" over and over again.

I was afraid that Mr. Somerled would drive (as he told me the night
before he liked driving his own car) and leave me sitting alone in the
immense gray automobile, which has a glass front and a top you can put
up or down. But to my joy he got in beside me, and let Vedder take the
wheel in those large, well-made hands which carry out the marble-statue
idea. I had no notion where we were going; and Vedder drove so slowly
that I guessed he was expecting further instructions.

As soon as we were safely away from the gate I asked the question
burning on my tongue: "You _won't_ take me to Grandma?"

"I thought you trusted me as I trusted you," was the only answer Mr.
Somerled condescended to make.

Suddenly I saw myself a selfish pig. "I do trust you," I insisted. "But
I _ought_ to want to go back of my own accord, rather than let you give
up--things--for me. I'm nothing to you----"

"You're Mrs. Ballantree MacDonald's daughter, and--er--a fellow-being."

"If it comes to that, I suppose a worm's a fellow-being. But this worm
has turned, and would as soon cross the path of a perfectly ravenous
early bird as go to its grandmother. So I won't do that, even for your
sake, though you've been so kind; but I wish you'd drop me at the
station where you found me, and let me travel to Edinburgh by train. I
can wait there for mother----"

"Nonsense!" he broke in; a word he seems devoted to, as he has already
used it several times to pound down some suggestion of mine as if he
were breaking it with a hammer. He has the air of a man used to getting
his own way with the world, anyhow with women, and I can't thi