adored emotional orgies. Well, poor things, they must have some pleasure in their dull stupid lives. Clever of the vicar to stage such a good show for them. He knew how to cater for a rural diocese.
To deflect her husband from possible weakness she turned to the young girl behind her.
"Lynneth, this is Doctor Thornton. He's a sort of uncle to all the fishermen of Seagate. Miss Lynneth Brey, Doctor Thornton. A connection of my husband's. She's going to spend a month or so with us—at Troon."
There, Edith thought, that'll let him know right off that they've not succeeded in scaring us. Her tactics were wasted. The doctor didn't even hear her. He was looking down into Lynneth's uplifted rosy face. Black eyes, soft, sooty, heart-catching. Eyes made for tears and laughter and—oh, yes! he knew at once—made for love. He looked deep, deeper into them; young, radiant, kindled with recent deep emotion. Eyes to light a man's path, to draw him on and up, above life's dusty sordid clamor. Eyes that promised and withheld.
Doctor Dick's feet were treading air, his heart thumped with the beat-beat-beat of hooves on a hollow road, his head felt full of fizzy champagne. But no one guessed it. He heard his voice, it didn't seem to surprize anyone, replying to the introduction. He waited with parted lips, eyes a clear tender blue, listening—listening for her voice.
"Oh!" She considered him. A smile drew her lips in an adorable sideways quirk. "You make me feel homesick, although I've only been here a day. You speak like a Highlander."
"I am one. From Gairloch."
She put out a small hand to be enveloped in his close grip, and laughed in quick delight.
"That's my place. My own darling funny village. My mother's birthplace. We've got a cottage there. D'you remember it? . . . the one like a brown loafat the head of Glen Ruach."
They drifted from the churchgate, away down the twisting road. The crowd of people might have been blown wet leaves. The two Kinlochs, left behind, exchanged long glances.
"Let 'em go." Alec took his wife's arm. "Birds of a feather—eh? She and Pills can keep each other amused. Looks like a case to me. You won't be bothered with her long."
"Really, Alec! There's the garage—what on earth are you dragging me on for? I'm certainly not going to hang about for that silly girl. Going off with a man she's just met, like that! She behaves like a child. No idea of appearances."
"What odds? Nobody's going to notice a kid like that."
"Nonsense! She's connected with us. D'you want him for a permanent relation?"
"Why not? Get the girl off your hands while the going's good. She and Pills would run a dispensary or a nursing-home and be too busy to interfere with us. This yearly visit's beginning to pall."
She glanced shrewdly at him.
"Something in that. And even if he's queer, quite important people have taken him up. Come on, then. I'm perishing with cold. This senseless fuss! Seagate doesn't seem to have altered since Troon House was first built."
They clambered into their car and splashed down the lane to their bungalow by the marshes.
"Quite! Quite! However, there are always two sides to everything."
Mr. Alec Kinloch presented a large bulwark of flesh from behind which his schoolboy's mind issued bulletins to the
