“By the way,” McQueen said, after he and Gavin had talked a little while, “did I ever advise you to smoke?”

“It is your usual form of salutation,” Gavin answered, laughing.  “But I don’t think you ever supplied me with a reason.”

“I daresay not.  I am too experienced a doctor to cheapen my prescriptions in that way.  However, here is one good reason.  I have noticed, sir, that at your age a man is either a slave to a pipe or to a woman.  Do you want me to lend you a pipe now?”

“Then I am to understand,” asked Gavin, slyly, “that your locket came into your possession in your pre-smoking days, and that you merely wear it from habit?”

“Tuts!” answered the doctor, buttoning his coat.  “I told you there was nothing in the locket.  If there is, I have forgotten what it is.”

“You are a hopeless old bachelor, I see,” said Gavin, unaware that the doctor was probing him.  He was surprised next moment to find McQueen in the ecstasies of one who has won a rubber.

“Now, then,” cried the jubilant doctor, “as you have confessed so much, tell me all about her.  Name and address, please.”

“Confess!  What have I confessed?”

“It won’t do, Mr. Dishart, for even your face betrays you.  No, no, I am an old bird, but I have not forgotten the ways of the fledgelings.  ‘Hopeless bachelor,’ sir, is a sweetmeat in every young man’s mouth until of a sudden he finds it sour, and that means the banns.  When is it to be?”

“We must find the lady first,” said the minister, uncomfortably.

“You tell me, in spite of that face, that you have not fixed on her?”

“The difficulty, I suppose, would be to persuade her to fix on me.”

“Not a bit of it.  But you admit there is some one?”

“Who would have me?”

“You are wriggling out of it.  Is it the banker’s daughter?”

“No,” Gavin cried.

“I hear you have walked up the back wynd with her three times this week.  The town is in a ferment about it.”

“She is a great deal in the back wynd.”

“Fiddle-de-dee!  I am oftener in the back wynd than you, and I never meet her there.”

“That is curious.”

“No, it isn’t, but never mind.  Perhaps you have fallen to Miss Pennycuick’s piano?  Did you hear it going as we passed the house?”

“She seems always to be playing on her piano.”

“Not she; but you are supposed to be musical, and so when she sees you from her window she begins to thump.  If I am in the school wynd and hear the piano going, I know you will turn the corner immediately.  However, I am glad to hear it is not Miss Pennycuick.  Then it is the factor at the Spittal’s lassie?  Well done, sir.  You should arrange to have the wedding at the same time as the old earl’s, which comes off in summer, I believe.”

“One foolish marriage is enough in a day, doctor.”

“Eh?  You call him a fool far marrying a young wife?  Well, no doubt he is, but he would have been a bigger fool to marry an old one.  However, it is not Lord Rintoul we are discussing, but Gavin Dishart.  I suppose you know that the factor’s lassie is an heiress?”