“Ah, when I speak of men.  Jack, I don’t mean old folk with balls in their knees.  I meant people of our own age that we could make friends of.  By the way, that crabbed old doctor had a son, had he not?”

“Oh yes, that’s Jim Horscroft, my best friend.”

“Is he at home?”

“No.  He’ll be home soon.  He’s still at Edinburgh studying.”

“Ah! then we’ll keep each other company until he comes, Jack.  And I’m very tired and I wish I was at West Inch.”

I made old Souter Johnnie cover the ground as he has never done before or since, and in an hour she was seated at the supper table, where my mother had laid out not only butter, but a glass dish of gooseberry jam, which sparkled and looked fine in the candle-light.  I could see that my parents were as overcome as I was at the difference in her, though not in the same way.  My mother was so set back by the feather thing that she had round her neck that she called her Miss Calder instead of Edie, until my cousin in her pretty flighty way would lift her forefinger to her whenever she did it.  After supper, when she had gone to bed, they could talk of nothing but her looks and her breeding.

“By the way, though,” says my father, “it does not look as if she were heart-broke about my brother’s death.”

And then for the first time I remembered that she had never said a word about the matter since I had met her.

CHAPTER III.

THE SHADOW ON THE WATERS.

It was not very long before Cousin Edie was queen of West Inch, and we all her devoted subjects from my father down.  She had money and to spare, though none of us knew how much.  When my mother said that four shillings the week would cover all that she would cost, she fixed on seven shillings and sixpence of her own free will.  The south room, which was the sunniest and had the honeysuckle round the window, was for her; and it was a marvel to see the things that she brought from Berwick to put into it.  Twice a week she would drive over, and the cart would not do for her, for she hired a gig from Angus Whitehead, whose farm lay over the hill.  And it was seldom that she went without bringing something back for one or other of us.  It was a wooden pipe for my father, or a Shetland plaid for my mother, or a book for me, or a brass collar for Rob the collie.  There was never a woman more free-handed.

But the best thing that she gave us was just her own presence.  To me it changed the whole country-side, and the sun was brighter and the braes greener and the air sweeter from the day she came.  Our lives were common no longer now that we spent them with such a one as she, and the old dull grey house was another place in my eyes since she had set her foot across the door-mat.  It was not her face, though that was winsome enough, nor her form, though I never saw the lass that could match her; but it was her spirit, her queer mocking ways, her fresh new fashion of talk, her proud whisk of the dress and toss of the head, which made one feel like the ground beneath her feet, and then the quick challenge in her eye, and the kindly word that brought one up to her level again.