smiled, but not the same smile. He would have been sure that the girl
was a minx, and the man a fool. He recognized this unreasonableness in
himself; nevertheless, he had no doubt that his own instinct about the
girl was right. She was genuine of her sort, whatever her strange sort
might be; and though he laughed at himself for the impulse, he could not
help wanting to do something for her, in an elder-brother way. For an
instant his thoughts went to the woman who was waiting for and expecting
him, the train being late. But quickly the curtain was drawn before her
portrait in his mind.

"You say your grandmother never let you make friends," he said, "yet you
seem to believe in your own knowledge of human nature."

"Because, what you aren't allowed to see or do, you think of a great
deal more. Knowledge _jumps_ into your head in such an interesting way,"
the girl answered, with an apologetic air, as a witness might if wishing
to conciliate a cross-questioning counsel. "Here's the jewellery I want
to sell. It was my father's, and belonged to his father and
grandfather."

She opened her ungloved right hand to reveal a bonnet brooch of
beautiful and very ancient workmanship showing the crest of the
MacDonalds of Dhrum set with a fine cairngorm and some exquisite old
paste. It must have come down through many fathers to many sons, for it
was at least two hundred years old.

"You would sell this?" the man exclaimed.

"Well, I _must_ get to London," she excused herself, "and it's the only
thing I have worth selling. I _knew_ you'd see it was good. The others
would hardly look at it, except one quite horrid man who squeezed my
hand when I was showing him the brooch, and that made me behave so
rudely to him he went away at once."

"Was your father a MacDonald of Dhrum?" asked the man who had not
squeezed her hand, and exhibited no wish to do so, though his eyes never
left her face.

"Yes. Why, do you know our tartan and crest?"

"I--thought I recognized them." For an instant he was tempted to add an
item of information concerning himself, but he beat down the impulse.
"If you want money, you can raise something on this without selling it,"
he went on. "It would be a pity to part with an heirloom."

"I didn't know I could do that," said the girl. "Of course it would be
better. I'm going to London to find somebody--my mother," she continued,
in a different tone. "When I get to her, she'll give me money, of
course, and