up, in America,
and making fame and fortune there? Mrs. James thinks that he even talks
like an American. She is a good judge, because more than half the
customers of her curiosity shop are Americans, and they chat with her
about all sorts of things. She reads her husband's history books, in
order to give him an agreeable surprise when he comes back, and the
knowledge she picks up is money in her pocket, because she can pour out
floods of information upon inquiring tourists. When she's kindly told
them all about the Romans in general and the Augustan Legion in
particular, and the Museum, and William Rufus's Castle; about the
Cathedral having been robbed of most of its nave to rebuild the city
walls in 1644, and Sir Walter Scott being married to his pretty French
bride there (or rather in St. Mary's Church, which was tacked on to it
in those days), and so on, Americans, and even canny Scots, can't sneak
out of her shop without buying something.

I loved the immense simplicity of that Norman nave, with its huge
crumpled arches crushed into curving waves by the long-ago collapse of
the foundations and the strain of centuries on the masonry. It was a
startling contrast to go from the Norman part into the choir, all a mass
of carving and decoration, with its vast east window of jewel-like
thirteenth-century glass, which Mr. Somerled pronounced finer even than
the windows of York and Gloucester cathedrals.

It seems that, although he hasn't been in Scotland since he left
seventeen years ago (vowing never to return until something or other
happened), he has been in England several times meanwhile, and travelled
all over Europe. He pretended that he wasn't at all excited about
crossing the border after these many years' exile, but when I cried out
that I couldn't believe him so commonplace and dull, he opened his eyes
wide, as surprised as if I'd boxed his ears. Mrs. James whispered that I
had been rude; and when I stopped to think, I realized how unlike Mrs.
West I had been. She is so gracious and complimentary to Mr. Somerled,
never saying anything she thinks he might dislike. But he heard Mrs.
James's whisper and said, "You must let her alone, please, my Lady
Chaperon, because I have a sort of idea she is going to dig me up by the
roots, and hang me up to air, and altogether do me a lot of good in the
end."

They both knew much more about the Cathedral than I did, but even I knew
something, because there was a book of fa