“Since you’re so well-educated,” says I, pulling her down beside me, “let’s see how much you remember.” And I put her through a most searching test which, being Elspeth, she interrupted from time to time with her serious observations on Mrs Morrison’s chances of marrying off the two chits.

“Well,” says I, when we were exhausted, “so long as I ain’t expected to help launch ’em in society, I don’t mind. Good luck to it, I say, and I hope they get a Duke apiece.”

But of course, I had to be dragged into it: Elspeth was quite determined to use my celebrity for what it was still worth, on her sisters’ behalf, and I knew that when she was insistent there was no way of resisting her. She controlled the purse-strings, you see, and the cash I had brought home wouldn’t last long at my rate of spending, I knew. So it was a fairly bleak prospect I had come back to: the guv’nor away in the grip of the quacks and demon drink, old Morrison in the house carping and snuffling, Elspeth and Mrs Morrison planning their campaign to inflict her sisters on unsuspecting London, and myself likely to be roped in—which meant being exposed in public alongside my charming Scotch relations. I should have to take old Morrison to my club, and stand behind Mrs Morrison’s chair at parties—no doubt listening to her teaching some refined mama the recipe for haggis—and have people saying: “Seen Flashy’s in-laws? They eat peat, don’t you know, and speak nothing but Gaelic. Well, it wasn’t English, surely?”

Oh, I knew what to expect, and determined to keep out of it. I thought of going to see my Uncle Bindley at the Horse Guards, and beseeching him to arrange an appointment for me to some regiment out of town—I was off the active list just then, and was not relishing the idea of half-pay anyway. And while I was hesitating, in those first few days at home, the letter came that helped to solve my difficulties for me and incidentally changed the map of Europe.

It came like the answer to a pagan’s prayer, along with a dun for some tailor or other, an anti-popish tract, a demand for my club subscription, and an invitation to buy railway shares—all the usual trash. Why I should remember the others, I don’t know; I must have a perverse memory, for the contents of the big white envelope should have been enough to drive them out of my head.