I asked the Major more than once what he knew about him, but he always put it off, and I could get no answer out of him.
Jim Horscroft was at home all that summer, but late in the autumn he went back to Edinburgh again for the winter session, and as he intended to work very hard and get his degree next spring if he could, he said that he would bide up there for the Christmas.

So there was a great leave-taking between him and Cousin Edie; and he was to put up his plate and to marry her as soon as he had the right to practise.

I never knew a man love a woman more fondly than he did her, and she liked him well enough in a way--for, indeed, in the whole of Scotland she would not find a finer looking man--but when it came to marriage, I think she winced a little at the thought that all her wonderful dreams should end in nothing more than in being the wife of a country surgeon.

Still there was only me and Jim to choose out of, and she took the best of us.
Of course there was de Lapp also; but we always felt that he was of an altogether different class to us, and so he didn't count.

I was never very sure at that time whether Edie cared for him or not.