ever it was, he
surrendered to me with an air of grave kindness which put on again the
several years he had thrown off in the last week. (Yes, it was only a
week that had made these changes for all of us!) Sitting with Barrie and
her good friend Mrs. James (great character, that little woman: must use
her in a book sooner or later), I knew just how passionately the girl
was looking forward to the "surprise" meeting with her mother. My nerves
were as tense as hers--even more tense, it may be, for I was like one
behind the scenes, knowing what she did not know. I felt so sure the
"surprise" was going to turn out differently from what she pictured that
I had a sense of guilt whenever I saw her smiling dreamily. I was
continually wondering what would happen, and what she would do when it
did happen. And I had the impression that Somerled constantly brooded
over the same subject, asking himself the same questions. The happier
the girl was, the sorrier we both were for her, silently, without
telling each other, and the more we wished to save her from any
suffering to come. I knew that I could read so far into Somerled's
thoughts, where they kept to the same road as mine; but I doubt if he
were conscious of any fellow-feeling with me. I was to him only the most
deeply infatuated and the most seriously in earnest of Barrie
MacDonald's rapidly accumulating string of ridiculous young men.

Sympathy and curiosity, tossed together in an indistinguishable mass,
made a confused omelette of my emotions as we spun along that lovely
wooded road past Galashiels and into Edinburgh. I wanted to witness the
first meeting of mother and daughter, yet I dreaded it. I didn't see how
I could decently contrive to be "on" in that scene, yet I felt it would
be too bad to be true that it should be enacted in my absence--almost as
monstrous as that the world should be able to get on with me out of it.

It was Somerled, of course, who settled that his Gray Dragon (Barrie's
name for the car) should arrive at Edinburgh on Sunday morning instead
of Monday. He didn't trouble himself with intricate explanations, merely
remarking that a Scotch Sunday was a bad day for travellers, apart from
their religious conventions. If they hadn't any, others had; and those
others were the very ones with power to make backsliders uncomfortable.
They could close abbeys and museums, and they could shut the doors of
inns in hungry faces at meal-times. "Besides," he finished