Indeed, Carl’s queer clothes and foreign looks notwithstanding, it seemed to be Joanna rather than he that held the attention of the onlookers. Quite apart from dress and feature, Joanna had lately got that in her presence which put her apart and set people speculating. She looked young (not more, decided the stout observer, than twenty-five) yet she had already discarded that density which is peculiarly the mark of youthful flesh. Had she perhaps just recovered from an illness? That seemed ruled out by the bounding movement of greeting with which she had run forward. Neither was she particularly thin. Yet there was a difference, a rarity – something that marked her out.

And how came Carl to be in Perth?

And how Joanna?

The better to talk, they sat down at her table and she told him briefly of her doings. It was more than two years since they had met, and Joanna could feel her friend’s clever eyes noting the changes in her. In him, except that the last traces of red had vanished from the grey of his beard, she could see no difference.

When she seemed to have no more to say, he told her that he was even now on his way to meet Lawrence Urquhart. Lawrence had been ill. She had not heard? Well, he was better now or nearly so, and together they were going to make what Carl called a “footing tour” in Fife. Carl had long wished to see the Fife villages which were said to be like villages in the Low Countries. Lawrence was also to see them now for the first time … Cupar, Falkland, Auchtermuchty, Strathmiglo! … such promising names as they had! Did Joanna know any of them? She did? Good! What now of the “ancient, royal burgh” of Auchtermuchty? It was there he was going to meet Lawrence that afternoon. Was it a place to be sketched? Had it, as the guide-book assured him, a beautiful town hall?

After having declared eagerly that she well knew Auchtermuchty, Joanna discovered that she could tell Carl nothing definite about it. It lay little more than five miles from Duntarvie, so that she had been there many a time. She remembered the horse-shows there, the crowded country races her father had enjoyed in spite of his principles. The great July Fair where as children they had crunched bright pink sugar hearts and wondered if they would be kidnapped by gypsies. But as to the size of the town, its situation, its architecture – as to anything indeed which might have been of use to Carl and Lawrence she was ignorant that she began to wonder if in reality she had ever been there at all. She was all the more anxious to go to Duntarvie – to make sure beyond a doubt whether a certain white-washed house and red-tiled steading had once stood in a fold of moorland.