Don't mind me; I'll be back presently.' McKeith seemed to take no heed of her departure; his eyes were fixed on Lady Bridget; there was in them a light of inward excitement.
'Please go on,' she said, 'I want so much to hear.' He thought for a few moments, shook the ashes from his pipe and then plunged into his story.
'I've got to go back to when I was quite a youngster--taken from school--I went to St Paul's in the Hammersmith Road--just before I was seventeen.

You see before that my father had scraped together his little bit of money and we'd been living in West Kensington waiting while he made out what we were all going to do.

He wasn't any great shakes, my father, in the way of birth, and fortune.

I daresay, you guessed that, Lady Bridget ?' She tossed her head back impatiently.

'Oh what DOES that matter! Go on, please.' 'He'd been a farmer, Glasgow way'-- McKeith still pronounced it 'Glesca,' 'and my mother was a minister's daughter, as good a woman and as true a lady as ever breathed.