time to get fond of anyone!"

"You're asked for a month; and if that isn't time enough, I don't know
what is."

"Time enough to be married and divorced again," cried Dick.

"But I shan't come to that; and besides, I have no clothes fit to be
seen."

"Oh, never mind; I'll lend you my white silk for evenings." And my
sister, who was always good-natured, carried me off to ransack her
wardrobe.

There was no help for it; remonstrances were useless; I had to go. The
invitation was from a schoolfellow of mine, Mysie Sutherland by name.
She lived near Inverness, and asked me to go and stay a month with her.
The idea filled me with apprehension. She was the only daughter, and
lived in style in a large house: I was one of a numerous family herded
together in a small house in Harley Street. Her father was a wealthy
landed proprietor: mine was a struggling doctor. Altogether I was shy
and nervous, and would much have preferred to remain at home; but Lucy
and Dick had decided I should go, and I knew there was no appeal.

A few days afterwards I was at Euston Station, on my way to the North.
My mother and sister had come to see me off, and stood at the carriage
door, passing remarks upon the people.

A knot of young men standing by the bookstall attracted our attention,
from their constant bursts of laughter. There was evidently a good joke
amongst them, and they were enjoying it to the full. The time was up,
and the train was just about to start, when one of them rushed forward
and jumped into my carriage. The guard slammed the door, his friends
threw some papers after him in at the window, and we were off.

For some time we sat silent, then a question about the window or the
weather opened a conversation. My companion was a good-looking young
man, with thick, curly brown hair. He had neither moustache, beard, nor
whiskers, which gave him a boyish appearance, and made me think he might
be an actor. His eyes were peculiar--they were kind eyes, honest eyes,
laughing eyes, but there was something about them that I could not make
out. As he sat nearly opposite to me I had every opportunity of studying
them, but not till we had travelled at least a hundred miles did I
discover what it was. They were not quite alike. There was no cast--not
the slightest suspicion of a squint--no, nothing of that kind; only they
were not a pair--one eye was hazel, the other grey; and yet the
difference in colour varied so much that sometimes I t