Is anything wrong ?" "Nothing in the least wrong," Jean said, swallowing hard, "only that I'm so silly." And presently she found herself pouring out her troubled thoughts about David, about the lions that she feared stood in his path at Oxford, about the hole his going made in the little household at The Rigs.

It was a comfort to tell it all to this delightful-looking stranger who seemed to understand in the most wonderful way.
"I remember when my brother Biddy went to Oxford," Pamela told her.

"I felt just as you do.

Our parents were dead, and I was five years older than my brother, and took care of him just as you do of your David.

I was afraid for him, for he had too much money, and that is much worse than having too little--but he didn't get changed or spoiled, and to this day he is the same, my own old Biddy." Jean dried her eyes and went on with her darning, and Pamela walked about looking at the books and talking, taking in every detail of this girl and her so individual room, the golden-brown hair, thick and wavy, the golden-brown eyes, "like a trout-stream in Connemara," that sparkled and lit and saddened as she talked, the mobile, humorous mouth, the short, straight nose and pointed chin, the straight-up-and-down belted brown frock, the whole toning so perfectly with the room with its polished floor and old Persian rugs, the pale yellow walls (even on the dullest day they seemed to hold some sunshine) hung with coloured prints in old rosewood frames--"Saturday Morning," engraved (with many flourishes) by T.Burke, engraver to His Serene Highness the Reigning Landgrave of Hesse Darmstadt; "The Cut Finger," by David Wilkie--those and many others.