“Don’t listen to Donald, my dear,” the hostess boomed reassuringly. “If there had been any unpleasantness with the bull, people on this side of the river would be sure to have seen. Donald dear!”

“What is it now, Trixie?”

“Don’t let yourself get too excited, will you? You’re making Carrie and Myrtle nervous.”

At this moment Catriona and Mary rose from the table simultaneously.

“Mary and I are feeling as fit as be blowed. We propose to foot it to the entrance of the glen and then beat both banks of the Bogle all the way back.”

“Catriona,” her mother protested, “you won’t be home till five or six in the morning if you do that.”

“That’s all right, Mother,” Mary growled. “We’ll take some grub with us.”

“Good girls, good girls,” their father applauded. “Don’t worry, Trixie. It’s a thoroughly sound scheme. When on earth is the next course coming, Toker?”

The butler approached his master’s chair and murmured some words in his ear. “Well, why does she let herself get fussed? I don’t let myself get fussed.”

At this moment one of the gillies made a sign to Toker from the doorway that he wished to speak to him.

Mrs MacDonald seemed oblivious of what Sir Hubert Bottley on her right was saying to her. She was watching Toker. Her mighty bosom heaved slowly like the Atlantic at the approach of a storm. She was wondering if the request of Catriona and Mary for grub to carry with them to Glenbogle had been that last straw to break the camel’s back of Mrs Ablewhite’s endurance, and if Toker was to be the bearer of an ultimatum. She saw him receive a note from the hands of the gillie, and after a momentary hesitation bring this letter to the Chieftain. She saw her husband tear open this letter and read it, and as he read she saw his countenance illuminated by a crimson fluorescence, his nose darken to the purple of a Himalayan potato, his ears smoulder, his eyes grow globular and luminous, his left hand grasp a handful of air and squeeze it into a vacuum.

“Something’s happened to Chester!” Carrie exclaimed.

“Ben Nevis, what is it?” Myrtle cried. “Oh, tell us the worst.”

“Donald!” his wife boomed, and tolled him back to his sole self.

The Chieftain threw the letter across the table to Kilwhillie.

“Read it, Hugh. I shall burst if I try to read it myself.”

Kilwhillie took his spectacle-case from the pocket of his mulberry-velvet doublet, put on his glasses and pored upon the letter.

“Not to yourself, Hugh,” the Chieftain bellowed. “Read it aloud.”

And in the fashionably unemotional voice of a barrister reading a love-letter in a breach of promise suit Kilwhillie read:

NATIONAL UNION OF HIKERS,
702, GOWER STREET,
W.C.2.

“Sir,