As she spoke, Phemie was rummaging in the drawer (she could keep no drawer tidy – not even this sacred bottom one); and presently finding what she sought, she drew forth a night-gown of gossamer.

“What do you think of this pattern, my darling? That’s none of Mamma’s goods, as you may perchance guess; our Nora got it from an American girl. Feel the stuff!”

Joanna laid admiring fingers on the lawn and lace, and put her cheek luxuriously against its softness. She thought of Maddalena, and seemed to hear her bass voice denouncing the beautifully flimsy garment. And surely Maddalena would have died of horror could she have seen Phemie dressing any afternoon to meet her Jimmie in town! Every drawer and door in the bedroom stood open; and from a tousled trunk under the bed, Phemie would select a flower, a feather, a tip of fur, or bow of ribbon, which, straightening impatiently before the mirror, she would pin upon a hat from which last day’s trimmings had been hastily torn. Sometimes the result was happy, oftener it was not. But always, as she turned her bird-like head this way and that, to see the effect of the decoration, Joanna was delighted by her friend’s odd, endearing beauty.

“You see,” continued Phemie, breaking into Joanna’s thoughts of Maddalena, “I suppose a woman is a kind of fairy to a man. Isn’t that so, my darling?”

IV

One Thursday, calling at Panmure Crescent on the pretext of returning a borrowed book, Joanna found Lawrence Urquhart there again. She was vexed at this. It was three weeks now since Pender’s going, and she had come hoping for word of his return. But she could not bring herself to speak of him before Urquhart.

“I’m glad you have come to-day, Joanna,” was Mildred’s greeting. “I have news for you.”

“It think it will please you,” she continued, nodding mysteriously. “Just wait a moment. The letter is downstairs.” And she left the room.

A pulse beat in Joanna’s throat. Surely, at last he must have written. Or was there news from the Town Council? If his designs had been accepted he should soon be back in Glasgow. More than ever now she wished Urquhart absent. Why should he dog her footsteps in this way?

But he seemed unconscious of her resentment, and the moment Mildred had gone, he began to talk with less than his usual hesitation.

He had just discovered, he told her, that his Mother, who as a girl had “sat under” Joanna’s grandfather at St. Jude’s, had been in those days a constant playmate of the Bannerman children. Her particular friend, it seemed, had been a daughter called “Gina.”

“Come one afternoon to our house and talk to my mother about her,” invited Lawrence. “She will love it if you will. She asked me to tell you so.”