David’s vacation was slipping past; and Jean was deep in preparations for his departure.  She longed vehemently for some money to spend.  There were so many things that David really needed and was doing without, so many of the things he had were so woefully shabby.  Jean understood better now what a young man wanted; she had studied Lord Bidborough’s clothes.  Not that the young man was anything of a dandy, but he had always looked right for every occasion.  And Jean thought that probably all the young men at Oxford looked like that—­poor David!  David himself never grumbled.  He meant to make money by his pen in spare moments, and his mind was too full of plans to worry much about his shabby clothes.  He sometimes worried about his sister, and thought it hard that she should have the cares of a household on her shoulders at an age when other girls were having the time of their lives, but he solaced himself with the thought that some day he would make it up to Jean, that some day she should have everything that now she was missing, full measure pressed down and running over.  It never occurred to the boy that Jean’s youth would pass, and whatever he might be able to give her later, he could never give her that back.

Pamela returned to Hillview in the middle of the month, just before David left.

Bella Bathgate owned that she was glad to have her back.  That indomitable spinster had actually missed her lodger.  She was surprised at her own pleasure in seeing the boxes carried upstairs again, in hearing the soft voice talking to Mawson, in sniffing the faint sweet scent that seemed to hang about the house when Miss Reston was in it, conquering the grimmer odour of naphtha and boiled cabbage which generally held sway.

Bella had missed Mawson too.  It was fine to have her back again in her cosy kitchen, enjoying her supper and full of tales of the glories of Champertoun.  Bella’s face grew even longer than it was naturally as she heard of the magnificence of that ancient house, of the chapel, of the ballroom, of the number of bedrooms, of the man-servants and maid-servants, of the motors and horses.

“Forty bedrooms!” she said, in scandalised tones.  “The thing’s rideeclous.  Mair like an institution than a private hoose.”

“Oh, it’s a gentleman’s ’ouse,” said Mawson proudly—­“the sort of thing Miss Reston’s accustomed to.  At Bidborough, I’m told, there’s bedrooms to ’old a regiment, and the same at Mintern Abbas, but I’ve never been there yet.  It was all the talk in the servants’ ’all at Champertoun ’oo would be Lady Bidborough.  There were several likely young ladies there, but ’e didn’t seem partial to any of them.”

“Whaur’s he awa to the noo?”

“Back to London for a bit, I ’eard, and later on we’re joining ’im at Bidborough.  Beller, I was thinking to myself when they were h’all talking, what if Lady B. should be a Priorsford lady?  His lordship did seem h’attentive in at The Rigs.  Wouldn’t it be a fine thing for Miss Jean?”