es could. She dresses her hair now as he liked best seventeen
years ago, though the fringe looks old-fashioned and odd. Grandma says
her hair is bleached, otherwise it couldn't have kept its yellow colour
at her age, forty-five. But it shines and is a lovely golden. She takes
the greatest pains in doing it, too, even when she's in a hurry on a
cold winter's morning, because she's never sure "the doctor" mayn't
appear that day, to give her a surprise. It would be too bad if, after
all these years, he should walk in and find her not looking her best!

She has features like a doll's, with large dark blue eyes, and high
arched eyebrows which give her an innocent, expectant expression. Heppie
says she blacks them; but Heppie has no eyebrows at all, so it's
difficult for her to believe in other people's.

When Mrs. James came to meet us at the door, she had a ladies' paper in
her hand, open at a page where it told you in big letters, "How to be
Beautiful Forever," so I suppose it's true, as Heppie says, that she's
always looking for recipes to keep young. She had on a lavender muslin
dress, very becoming to her fair complexion, which would be perfect if
she hadn't a very few little veins showing in the pink of her cheeks,
and some faint, smiling-lines round her eyes, which you see only if you
stare rudely as Grandma does, to "take down Mrs. James's vanity."
Lavender was the doctor's favourite colour, and she invariably wears one
shade or another of it. She never would go into mourning for him, as
people thought she ought to do when he disappeared.

I explained everything, talking so fast that I got out of breath, while
Mr. Somerled walked round the room looking at the curiosities. I was
glad no customers came in to interrupt; but luckily there wasn't much
danger at that hour, as it wasn't yet half-past two, and people had
scarcely finished their luncheons. As I talked, she gave little
exclamations almost like the cooing of a dove; and the most desperate
thing in our story seemed to be, in her opinion, the fact that we hadn't
lunched.

She insisted on giving us eggs and apple-tart and coffee in her own
dining-room, and she let us come into the kitchen and help cook. Mr.
Somerled looked quite young and boyish. We all three laughed a good
deal. Not a word did Mr. Somerled say about my going to Edinburgh or the
chaperon business until we'd finished our picnic meal, and he had
selected several of the best and most expensive thi