‘I am afraid you are going to be eccentric, my dear,’ said Mrs. Fordyce.  ’I cannot help regretting that Madame Bonnemain was prevented coming to Bourhill.  She would have set her foot down on this.’

‘Then she would have been mistress of Bourhill,’ answered Gladys, with a faint smile, ‘and we should certainly have disagreed.’

Mrs. Fordyce looked at her curiously.

’There is a great deal of character about you, Gladys.  I am afraid you are rather an imposition.  To look at you, one would think you as gentle as a lamb.’

‘Dear Mrs. Fordyce, don’t make me out such a terrible person,’ said Gladys quickly.  ’Is it so odd that I should wish to brighten life a little for those whom I know have had so very little brightness?’

’No; it is not your aim, only your method, I object to, my dear.  It will never do to fill Bourhill with such people.  But I will say no more.  Experience will teach you expediency and discretion.’

‘We shall see,’ replied Gladys, with a laugh, and for the first time she experienced a sense of relief at parting with her kind friend.

Mrs. Fordyce was a kind-hearted woman, and did a great many good deeds, though on strictly conventional lines.  She was the clever organiser of Church charities, the capable head of the Ladies’ Provident and Dorcas Society, to which she grudged neither time nor money; but she did not believe in personal contact with the very poor, nor in the power or efficacy of individual sympathy and effort.  She thought a great deal about Gladys that day, pondering and puzzling over her action—­a trifle nettled, if it must be told, at the calm, quiet manner in which her disapproval had been ignored.  Gladys was indeed proving herself a very capable and independent mistress of Bourhill.

Meanwhile the two girls, whom fortune had so differently favoured, journeyed together into Ayrshire.  A strange shyness seemed to have taken possession of Teen; she sat bolt upright in the corner of the carriage, clutching her tin box, and looking half-scared, half-defiant; even the red feather in her hat seemed to wear an aggressive air.  In her soul she fervently rued the step she had taken, and thought with longing of her own little room, and with affectionate regret of the bundle she had so proudly returned to Mrs. Galbraith.

‘What are you thinking of, Teen?  You don’t look at all happy,’ said Gladys, growing a trifle embarrassed by the continued silence.

‘I’m no’; I wish I hadna come,’ was the flat reply, which made the sensitive colour rise in the fair cheek of Gladys.

’Oh no, you don’t; you are only shy.  Wait till you have seen Bourhill; you will think it the loveliest place in the world,’ she said cheerfully.

‘Maybe,’ answered Teen doubtfully.  ‘I feel gey queer the noo, onyhoo.’

This was not encouraging.  Gladys became silent also, and both felt relieved when the train stopped at Mauchline Station.