She was too dispirited even to protest against the small and hideous villa which Juley took for two months on one of the Clyde lochs. And although the boys enjoyed the sea-fishing and knocking about in boats, all five got badly on each other’s nerves during the holiday. Georgie resented not having been consulted in the choice of a place. They might at least have remembered that she hated the Clyde, and felt ill there. A cold and rainy season did not help. Georgie criticized unceasingly, and unceasingly practised her fiddle in the only sitting-room. Her diligence, as Janet the cook said, was “something awful.” Now and then Georgie would demand of the others if they didn’t notice the extraordinary difference in her tone, due to Dresden; and if the answer was doubtful, she argued the point till a definitely favourable reply was forthcoming. Once when Sholto stuck to his guns and insisted that it sounded the very same as before, she said, “Well, it can’t be helped what you think; I know it’s quite different!” Absence had made her very sensitive too to the failings of her family, and she girded particularly at her mother. Then Sholto, who could be as inimical to his mother as any of them would step out as her champion. Georgie and he had always been peculiarly capable of irritating each other, and now they squabbled maddeningly over trifles. Linnet took to mooning. Joanna was quiet and wretched. Juley with many tears prayed for guidance and forgiveness.

Yet were there hours when for a quiet breathing-space the five seemed to regain something of their forgotten early harmony.

One promising afternoon Joanna and Georgie packed a picnic-basket, and with rugs and a kettle they all climbed the hill behind the house. Sholto pushed his mother up the steepest places with such vigour that she laughed like a schoolgirl with her clear bell-like laugh. Then when they had sat down and spread out their belongings, Linnet took her shoes off, and Joanna pulled out the toes of her thick cashmere stockings in the way Juley loved because it eased her poor feet. Next Georgie massaged the tell-tale ankles, remonstrating with them, but more gently than usual, while the others ran here and there, calling to each other in echoing voices and collecting wood and dry bits of heather for the fire. Joanna was always happy tending a fire, and the boiling of the kettle was her special charge. After tea they even forebore to object when Juley read out to them from Asia’s Millions how the Gospel was spreading among mandarins.

Yet another interval of reunion was to remain as a happy memory.