“I used tae pit Marcella, yer mither, tae her bed when she was a wee thing,” said Jean, taking his small brown hand.  He put the sweet into his mouth and trotted off beside her.  At the door he stopped to kiss his hand to his mother.  The rats scuttled across the floor above; one in the wainscoting scratched and gnawed.  Andrew hesitated and came back a few steps.  They were all watching him.

“Mummy!” he began in a very thin little voice.  Marcella started as if to go to him, and sat back suddenly.

“Andwew will kill wats—­wiv a big stick,” he said, and marched out of the room before Jean.

Before a week had gone by it seemed to Marcella that she had never been away from Lashnagar.  The place wrapped her round, took possession of her.  She took Louis down to the huts to see Wullie; she toasted herrings over the fire, and Louis was unexpectedly friendly; the only difference was that Jock was not there any more when the fishing boats came in; and where she had left girls and boys she found young men and women and little babies:  they grew up quickly on the hillside.  Louis went with her on Ben Grief and saw the old grey house.  He wandered on Lashnagar and looked down the terrifying chasms, and heard the screaming of the gulls; and he was unutterably wretched and out of it all.

On Lashnagar he said to her, one day: 

“Marcella, it ought to be made compulsory for people, before they think of being married, to find out all about each other’s youth.”

“Like that poem of poor Lamb’s?” she said.  “Oh thou dearer than a brother!  Why wast thou not born within my father’s dwelling?  So might we talk of the old familiar faces—­Yes, I believe there’s a lot in it.”

“Since I’ve been here and seen things, I’ve understood you better.  Seeing your home, and mine, and thinking how we were the products of those homes!  I’m glad young Andrew is here, till it’s time for him to go to school.  I see where you get your friendliness that used to shock me, and your hardness.  I’d like him to get it all.”

“I was hoping to protect him from it,” she said.  “But I know you’re right, really,” she said slowly.

That was the day before he went south to Edinburgh to join the hospital.  His mother wanted him in London, and his father wrote saying that his old room was ready for him.  But Louis told them that Marcella must be at Lashnagar, and Edinburgh was nearer Lashnagar than London was.  Dr. Angus felt personally responsible for the resources of Edinburgh when he heard the news and once again he made a pilgrimage, taking Louis to his old rooms in Montague Street, and doing the honours of the city with a proprietorial air.  He took to running down to Edinburgh quite frequently; he said he was brushing up his knowledge.