“So I have,” answered the Major.

“Never to my knowledge.”

“But I’ll swear it!”

“Where then?”

“At the village of Astorga, in the year ’8.”

De Lapp started, and stared again at our neighbour.

“Mon Dieu, what a chance!” he cried.  “And you were the English parlementaire?  I remember you very well indeed, sir.  Let me have a whisper in your ear.”

He took him aside and talked very earnestly with him in French for a quarter of an hour, gesticulating with his hands, and explaining something, while the Major nodded his old grizzled head from time to time.  At last they seemed to come to some agreement, and I heard the Major say “Parole a’honneur” several times, and afterwards “Fortune de la guerre,” which I could very well understand, for they gave you a fine upbringing at Birtwhistle’s.  But after that I always noticed that the Major never used the same free fashion of speech that we did towards our lodger, but bowed when he addressed him, and treated him with a wonderful deal of respect.  I asked the Major more than once what he knew about him, but he always put it off, and I could get no answer out of him.

Jim Horscroft was at home all that summer, but late in the autumn he went back to Edinburgh again for the winter session, and as he intended to work very hard and get his degree next spring if he could, he said that he would bide up there for the Christmas.  So there was a great leave-taking between him and Cousin Edie; and he was to put up his plate and to marry her as soon as he had the right to practise.  I never knew a man love a woman more fondly than he did her, and she liked him well enough in a way—­for, indeed, in the whole of Scotland she would not find a finer looking man—­but when it came to marriage, I think she winced a little at the thought that all her wonderful dreams should end in nothing more than in being the wife of a country surgeon.  Still there was only me and Jim to choose out of, and she took the best of us.

Of course there was de Lapp also; but we always felt that he was of an altogether different class to us, and so he didn’t count.  I was never very sure at that time whether Edie cared for him or not.  When Jim was at home they took little notice of each other.  After he was gone they were thrown more together, which was natural enough, as he had taken up so much of her time before.  Once or twice she spoke to me about de Lapp as though she did not like him, and yet she was uneasy if he were not in in the evening; and there was no one so fond of his talk, or with so many questions to ask him, as she.  She made him describe what queens wore, and what sort of carpets they walked on, and whether they had hairpins in their hair, and how many feathers they had in their hats, until it was a wonder to me how he could find an answer to it all.  And yet an answer he always had; and was so ready and quick with his tongue, and so anxious to amuse her, that I wondered how it was that she did not like him better.