Bridge.  There’s a kind of pleasure in finding the north, don’t you think?  And—­fancy this being here!  I thought I’d lost it long ago.  It’s a wee garnet I found on the beach at Elie.  I was set up all the afternoon with finding a precious stone.  I would like fine to be a miner in the precious stone mines in Mexico.  If I was a boy I would go.  And the rest’s just papers.  Here’s notes on a Geographical Society lecture on the geology of Yellowstone Park I went to last spring.  Very instructive it was.  And here’s a diagram I did when I was working for the Bible examination on the Second Book of Kings—­the lines of the House of Israel and the House of Judah drawn to scale on square paper, five years to a square and set parallel so that you can see which buddy was ruling on the one throne when another buddy was on the other.  I came out fifth in all Scotland.  And this is a poem I wrote.  It’s not a good poem.  The subject was excellent—­reflections of an absinthe-drinker condemned to death for the murder of his mistress—­but I couldn’t give it the treatment it desairved.  No, you will nut see it.  I’ll just tear it up.  There.  It’ll do the whaups no harm scattering over the moor, for they’ve no aesthetic sensibilities.  But I shouldn’t be surprised if you had, though I’ve heard that the English don’t care much for art.  I’m not much good at the poetry, but I have the grace to know it, and so I’ve just given it up.  I make my own blouses, though I know I can’t equal the professional product that’s sold in the shops, because it comes cheaper.  But with the Carnegie library handing out the professional product for nothing, I see no reason why I should write my own poems.  That’s all in this pocket.  But I think there’s more in the other.  Oh, mercy, there’s nothing at all except this pair of woollen gloves I had forgotten.  Not another thing.  And no wonder.  There’s a hole in it the size of an egg.  Now, if that isn’t vexatious.  I had some real nice things in that pocket.  A wee ammonite, I remember.  Och, well, it can’t be helped.  I’m afraid you’ve seen nothing very thrilling after all.”

“Oh yes, I have,” said Yaverland.

“Indeed you’ve not.  Yet certainly you’re looking tickled to death.  No wonder Scotch comedians have such a success when they go among the English if they’re all as easily amused as you.”

“Your pockets are like a boy’s,” he said.  “In a way, you’re awfully like a boy.”

“I wish I was,” she answered bitterly.  “But I’m a girl, and I’ve nothing before me.  No going to sea for me as there was for you.”  But they were nearly at the bridge now, and she was changed to a gay child because she loved this spot.  She ran forward, crying, “Is it not beautiful?  Look, you didn’t think there was this grand loch stretching away there!  And look how the firs stand at the water’s edge.  The day Rachael and I came there was a clump of bell-heather just on that point of rock.  A bonny pinky red it was.  And look how Bavelaw Avenue marches up the hill!  Is it not just fine?”