“No, thanks, I had a very good breakfast in the train. But I think I’ll go and get out of these clothes, and have a bath.”

“That’s the stuff.”

And as Hector MacDonald, Younger, of Ben Nevis strode off towards his room, Angus MacQuat piped before him Mac ’ic Eachainn’s Return to Glenbogle.

On the morning of August 28th Carrie awoke to the agreeable thought that Ben Nevis had been granted his desire and that it was a gloriously fine day As a matter of fact it was a fine day, but the rich glow that filled the room was caused not by the sun but by her own husband, who was standing at the foot of the bed wearing a kilt that was not so much orange as flame-coloured, a doublet of amber tweed, and a heavily-brassed leather sporran.

“Chester! That’s why you asked me whether I liked orange or purple best. But why didn’t you wear my tartan—the Ben Nevis Macdonald?”

“Listen, sweetheart, I went into the whole business of tartans with Kilwhillie, and he ruled right out the idea of wearing a wife’s tartan. By what I could make out those who know about these things calculate no man can do anything much dirtier than sport his wife’s tartan. Kilwhillie classed a man who sported his wife’s tartan with cattle-rustlers and kidnappers and communists. He wanted me to have a grey kilt, but I said ‘nothing doing.’ And then he admitted that some guy in the eighteenth century used to wear a purple kilt. And that was my first idea. In fact there’s a purple kilt being made for me right now in Inverness. But you remember those Scottish Nationalists who got Ben Nevis’s goat?”

“I remember a whole lot of foolish talk about Scottish Nationalists, yes.”

“All right, honey, don’t you get peeved now. But one of those Scottish Nationalists was wearing a red and yellow kilt which took my eye as we drove past in the car. And I said to myself right then I’d have an orange kilt.”

“A red and yellow kilt? That sounds like the Macmillan tartan. Mr. Macmillan, the young poet I told you about, wears a red and yellow kilt. Or at least he did when I met him in Edinburgh. By the way, I’m expecting him and Mr Menzies, the architect, to reach Knocknacolly to-day, and I thought Myrtle and I would drive over to-morrow and see how they’re getting along.”

“That’s fine. But you haven’t said what you think of my costume?”

“Why, Chester, I think you look a perfectly good Highlander.”

“Are you pleased I’ve shown my appreciation of your ancestral territory like this?”

“Chester, you’ve been just as sweet as you could be about my country.”