in London, and he knows nothing about anybody in Priorsford, so you needn’t worry about him—­and he will arrange that you get a sufficient income all your life.  No, it isn’t charity.  You’ve fought hard all your life for others, and it’s high time you got a rest.  Everyone should get a rest and a competency when they are sixty. (Not that you are nearly that, of course.) Some day that happy state of affairs will be.  Now the kettle’s almost boiling, and I’m going to make you a cup of tea.  Where’s the caddy?”

There was a spoonful of tea in the caddy, but in the cupboard there was only the heel of a loaf—­no butter, no cheese, no jam.

“I’m at the end of my tether,” Miss Abbot admitted.  “And unless I touch the money laid away for my rent, I haven’t a penny in the house.”

“Then,” said Jean, “it was high time I turned up.”  She heated the teapot and poked the bit of coal into a blaze.  “Now here’s your tea”—­she reached for her bag that lay on the table—­“and here’s some money to go on with.  Oh, please don’t let’s go over it all again.  Do, my dear, be reasonable.”

“I doubt it’s charity,” said poor Miss Abbot, “but I cannot refuse.  Indeed, I don’t seem to take it in....  I’ve whiles dreamed something like this, and cried when I wakened.  This last year has been something awful—­trying to hide my failing eye-sight and pretending I didn’t need sewing when I was near starving, and always seeing the workhouse before me.  When I got up this morning there seemed to be a high wall in front of me, and I knew I had come to the end.  I thought God had forgotten me.”

“Not a bit of it,” said Jean.  “Put away that money like a sensible body, and I’ll write to my lawyer to-day.  And the next thing to do is to go with me to an oculist, for your eyes may not be as bad as you think.  You know, Miss Abbot, you haven’t treated your friends well, keeping them all at arm’s length because you were in trouble.  Friends do like to be given the chance of being useful....  Now I’ll tell you what to do.  This is a nice fresh day.  You go and do some shopping, and be sure and get something nice for your supper, and fresh butter and marmalade and things, and then go for a walk along Tweedside and let the wind blow on you, and then drop in and have a cup of tea and a gossip with one of the friends you’ve been neglecting lately, and you see if you don’t feel heaps better....  Remember nobody knows anything about this but you and me.  I shan’t even tell Mr. Macdonald....  You will get papers and things to sign, I expect, from the lawyer, and if you want anything explained you will come to The Rigs, won’t you?  Perhaps you would rather I didn’t come here much.  Good morning, Miss Abbot,” and Jean went away.  “For all the world,” as Miss Abbot said to herself, “as if lifting folk from the miry clay and setting their feet on a rock was all in the day’s work.”

* * * * *

The days slipped away and March came and David was home again; such a smart David in new clothes and (like Shakespeare’s Town Clerk) “everything handsome about him.”