"May I begin at the beginning?" asked the Doctor, and
Hugh silently nodded.
("He sat there and never took his eyes off me, twisting
his fingers. I might have been in a confession-box," Dr
Drummond would explain to her.)
"She came here, Miss Cameron, with that good woman, Mrs
Kilbannon, it will be three weeks next Monday," he said,
with all the air of beginning a story that would be well
worth hearing. "And I wasn't very well pleased to see
her, for reasons that you know. However, that's neither
here nor there. I met them both at the station, and I
own to you that I thought when I made Miss Cameron's
acquaintance that you were getting better than you deserved
in the circumstances. You were a thousand miles away--now
that was a fortunate thing!--and she and Mrs Kilbannon
just stayed here and made themselves as comfortable as
they could. And that was so comfortable that anyone could
see with half an eye"--the Doctor's own eye twinkled--"so
far as Miss Cameron was concerned, that she wasn't pining
in any sense of the word. But I wasn't sorry for you,
Finlay, on that account." He stopped to laugh enjoyingly,
and Finlay blushed like a girl.
"I just let matters bide and went about my own business.
Though after poor Mrs Forsyth here--a good woman enough,
but the brains of a rabbit--it was pleasant to find these
intelligent ladies at every meal, and wonderful how quick
they were at picking up the differences between the points
of Church administration here and at home.
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