celebrity like Mrs. West, isn't pleased
when she expects all the attention of young gentlemen for herself, to
find that she goes for nothing, and all they want is to talk to some one
else. And then, at her age, to be taken for a grown-up girl's mother! I
couldn't help being sorry for her myself. I know what it is to want to
keep young."

"But you're thinking of Doctor James," said I. "And she's a _widow_.
Besides, she's always calling me a child, and telling me to play dolls."

"Well, that isn't to say that she wants all the men there are to play
dolls with you," chuckled Mrs. James.

"These were boys, compared to her. She must be _thirty_."

"Maybe she's more, if the truth were known. But why should it be known?
Even when we're thirty and--er--a little over--we like to be admired by
boys as well as others. It makes us feel we haven't got _beyond_ things.
Still, she needn't grudge you those lads. She's got the great Somerled."

"Yes, I suppose she has," I admitted grudgingly.

I went to bed feeling as if elephants had walked over me for years.

* * * * *

Next morning Sir S. seemed to take it for granted that Basil would look
after Mrs. James and me. He certainly put on rather a "kind uncle" air
with me, but the more he did so, the less and less I felt as if he were
my uncle, and the more and more I wanted to have him for my knight--mine
all alone, without so much as a link of his chain armour for any one
else.

It is strange, as I've thought often before already, how one can get to
feel in such a way about a person one has known only a few days. But you
see, _I've known Sir S. in a motor-car_. I do believe that makes a
difference. Motor-cars vibrate, and you vibrate in them faster than you
do when not in motor-cars; so your feelings travel much faster than they
would in any other way. _That_ must be the scientific explanation of
what I feel for Sir S.

Here we were in Ayr, whither we'd come to think about Burns and nobody
else (unless, perhaps, Wallace) and this was to be the beginning of a
special little tour, following all along the line of Burns's pathway in
life, from his birth in the town of Ayr, to his death in the town of
Dumfries. We'd hurried through Dumfries almost with our eyes shut, on
purpose not to see where he died, before he was born, so to speak; and I
had thought all this inspiration on the part of Sir S. I fancied that he
had planned it partly for my sake, b