The humourist was clearly so pleased with his jest that no further debate was to be apprehended, and his wife went out to write the letter. Mr. Craigie lit his sixteenth pipe since breakfast and chewed the cud of his wit very happily.
A fortnight later he returned one evening in the car, bringing Miss Eileen Holland, with her trunk and her brown suitcase.
“My hat, Selina!” said he to his wife, as soon as the girls had led Miss Holland out of hearing, “that’s the kind of governess for me! You don’t mind my telling her to call me Dick, do you? It slipped out when she was squeezing my hand.”
“I don’t mind you’re being undignified,” replied Mrs. Craigie in a chilly voice, “but I do wish you wouldn’t be vulgar.”
As Mr. Craigie’s chief joys in life were entertaining his daughters and getting a rise out of his wife, and as he also had a very genuine admiration for a pretty face, he was in the seventh heaven of happiness, and remained there for the next three days. Pipe in mouth, he invaded the schoolroom constantly and unseasonably, and reduced his daughters to a state of incoherent giggling by retailing to Miss Holland various ingenious schemes for their corporal punishment, airing humorous fragments of a language he called French, and questioning their instructor on suppositious romantic episodes in her career. He thought Miss Holland hardly laughed as much as she ought; still, she was a fine girl.
At table he kept his wife continually scandalised by his jocularities; such as hoarsely whispering, “I’ve lost my half of the sixpence, Miss Holland,” or repeating, with a thoughtful air, “Under the apple-tree when the moon rises—I must try and not forget the hour!” Miss Holland was even less responsive to these sallies, but he enjoyed them enormously himself, and still maintained she was a fine girl.
Mrs. Craigie’s opinion of her new acquisition was only freely expressed afterwards, and then she declared that clever though Miss Holland undoubtedly was, and superior though she seemed, she had always suspected that something was a little wrong somewhere. She and Mr. Craigie had used considerable influence and persuasion to obtain a passport for her, and why should they have been called upon to do this (by a lady whom Mrs. Armitage admitted she had only met twice), simply to give a change of air to a healthy-looking girl? There was something behind that. Besides, Miss Holland was just a trifle too good-looking. That type always had a history.
“My wife was plain Mrs. Craigie before the thing happened,” observed her husband with a twinkle, “but, dash it, she’s been Mrs. Solomon ever since!”
It was on the fourth morning of Miss Holland’s visit that the telegram came for her. Mr. Craigie himself brought it into the schoolroom and delivered it with much facetious mystery. He noticed that it seemed to contain a message of some importance, and that she failed to laugh at all when he offered waggishly to put “him” up for the night. But she simply put it in her pocket and volunteered no explanation. He went away feeling that he had wasted a happy quip.
After lunch Mrs. Craigie and the girls were going out in the car, and Miss Holland was to have accompanied them. It was then that she made her only reference to the telegram. She had got a wire, she said, and had a long letter to write, and so begged to be excused. Accordingly the car went off without her.
Not five minutes later Mr. Craigie was smoking a pipe and trying to summon up energy to go for a stroll, when Miss Holland entered the smoking-room. He noticed that she had never looked so smiling and charming.
“Oh, Mr. Craigie,” she said, “I want you to help me. I’m preparing a little surprise!”
“For the girls?”
“For all of you!”
The laird loved a practical jest, and scented happiness at once.
“I’m your man!” said he. “What can I do for you?”
“I’ll come down again in half an hour,” said she. “And then I want you to help me to carry something.”
She gave him a swift bewitching smile that left him entirely helpless, and hurried from the room.
Mr. Craigie looked at the clock and decided that he would get his stroll into the half-hour, so he took his stick and sauntered down the drive. On one side of this drive was a line of huddled wind-bent trees, and at the end was a gate opening on the highroad, with the sea close at hand. Just as he got to the gate a stranger appeared upon the road, walking very slowly, and up to that moment concealed by the trees. He was a clergyman, tall, clean-shaved, and with what the laird afterwards described as a “hawky kind of look.”
There was no haughtiness whatever about the laird of Breck. He accosted everyone he met, and always in the friendliest way.
“A fine day!” said he heartily. “Grand weather for the crops, if we could just get a wee bit more of rain soon.”
The clergyman stopped.
“Yes, sir,” said he, “it is fine weather.”
His manner was polite, but not very hearty, the laird thought. However, he was not easily damped, and proceeded to contribute several more observations, chiefly regarding the weather prospects, and tending to become rapidly humorous. And then he remembered his appointment in the smoking-room.
“Well,” said he, “good day to you! I must be moving, I’m afraid.”
“Good day,” said the stranger courteously, and moved off promptly as he spoke.
“I wonder who will that minister be?” said Mr. Craigie to himself as he strolled back. “It’s funny I never saw the man before. And I wonder, too, where he was going?”
And then it occurred to him as an odd circumstance that the minister had started to go back again, not to continue as he had been walking.
“That’s a funny thing,” he thought.
He had hardly got back to his
