“Yes,” Jean agreed.  “Hasn’t she charming manners?  It is so good for the children to be with her.  She is so polite to them that they can’t be anything but gentle and considerate in return.  Heaps of girls would think school-marming very dull, but Elspeth makes it into a sort of daily entertainment.  They manage, she and her sister, to make the dullest child see some glimmer of reason in learning lessons.  I do wish I had had a teacher like that.  I had a governess who taught me like a parrot.  She had no notion how to make the dry bones live.  I thought I scored by learning as little as I possibly could.  The consequence is I’m almost entirely illiterate....  There’s the car waiting, and Jock prancing impatiently.  Run in for your thick coat, Mhor.  No, you can’t take Peter.  He chased sheep last time and fought the other dogs and made himself a nuisance.”

Mhor was now pleading that he might sit in the front beside the chauffeur and cry “Honk, honk,” as they went round corners.

“Well,” said Jean, “choose whether it will be going or coming back.  Jock must sit there one time.”

Mhor, as he always did, grasped the pleasure of the moment, and clambered into the seat beside the chauffeur, an old and valued friend, whom he greeted familiarly as “Tam.”

The road to Laverlaw ran through the woods behind Peel, dipped into the Manor Valley and, emerging, made straight for the hills, which closed down round it as though jealous of the secrets they guarded.  It seemed to a stranger as if the road led nowhere, for nothing was to be seen for miles except bare hillsides and a brawling burn.  Suddenly the road took a turn, a white bridge spanned the noisy Laverlaw Water, and there at the opening of a wide, green glen stood the house.

Lewis Elliot was waiting at the doorstep to greet them.  He had been out all morning, and with him were his two dogs, Rab and Wattie.  Jock and Mhor threw themselves on them with many-endearing names, before they even looked at their host.

“Is luncheon ready?” was Mhor’s greeting.

“Why?  Are you hungry?”

“Oh yes, but it’s not that.  I wondered if there would be time to go to the stables.  Tam says there are some new puppies.”

“I’d keep the puppies for later, if I were you,” Lewis Elliot advised.  “You’d better have luncheon while your hands are fairly clean.  Jean will be sure to make you wash them if you go mucking about in the stables.”

Mhor nodded.  He was no Jew, and took small pleasure in the outward cleansing of the cup and platter.  Soap and water seemed to him almost quite unnecessary, and he had greatly admired and envied the Laplanders since Jock had told him that that hardy race rarely, if ever, washed.

“I hope you weren’t cold in that open car,” Lewis Elliot said as he helped Pamela and Jean to remove their wraps.  “D’you mind coming into my den?  It’s warm, if untidy.  The drawing-room is so little used that it’s about as cheerful as a tomb.”