“Must we always call you Lord?” Mhor asked.

“Of course you must,” Jean said.  “Really, Mhor, you and Jock are sometimes very stupid.”

“Indeed you must not,” said Lord Bidborough.  “Forgive me, Miss Jean, if I am undermining your authority, but, really, one must have some say in what one is to be called.  Why not call me Biddy?”

“That might be too familiar,” said Jock.  “I think I would rather call you Richard Plantagenet.”

“Because it isn’t my name?”

“It sort of suits you,” Jock said.

“I like long names,” said Mhor.

“Will you call me Richard Plantagenet, Miss Jean?”

The yellow lights in Jean’s eyes sparkled.  “If you’ll call me Penny-plain,” she said.

“Then that’s a bargain, though I don’t think either of us is well suited.  However—­now that we are really friends, what did you do this afternoon that was so very important?”

“Talked to Lewis Elliot for one thing:  he came to tea.”

“I see.  An excellent fellow, Lewis.  He’s a relation of yours, isn’t he?”

“A very distant one, but we have so few relations we are only too glad to claim him.  He has been a very good friend to us always....  Mhor, you really must go to bed now.”

“Oh, all right, but I don’t think it’s very polite to go to bed when a visitor’s in.  It might make him think he ought to go away.”

Lord Bidborough laughed, and assured Mhor that he appreciated his delicacy of feeling.

“There’s a thing I want to ask you, anyway,” said Mhor.—­“Yes, I’m going to bed, Jean.  Whether do you think Quentin Durward or Charlie Chaplin would be the better man in a fight?”

Lord Bidborough gave the matter some earnest thought, and decided on Quentin Durward.

“I told you that,” said.  Jock to Mhor.  “Now, perhaps, you’ll believe me.”

“I don’t know,” said Mhor, still doubtful.  “Of course Quentin Durward had his sword—­but you know that way Charlie has with a stick?”

“Well, anyway, go to bed,” said Jean, “and stop talking about that horrible little man.  He oughtn’t to be mentioned in the same breath as Quentin Durward.”

Mhor went out of the room still arguing.

The next day David came home.

The whole family, including Peter, were waiting on the platform to welcome him, but Mhor was too interested in the engine and Jock too afraid of showing sentiment to pay much attention to him, and it was left to Jean and Peter to express joy at his return.

At first it seemed to Jean that it was a different David who had come back.  There was an indefinable change even in his appearance.  True, he wore the same Priorsford clothes that he had gone away in, but he carried himself better, with more assurance.  His round, boyish face had taken on a slightly graver and more responsible look, and his accent certainly had an Oxford touch.  Enough, anyhow, to send Jock and Mhor out of the room to giggle convulsively in the lobby.  To Jean’s relief David noticed nothing; he was too busy telling Jean his news to trouble about the eccentric behaviour of the two boys.