And then suddenly the present tripped up the future and nothing mattered except the joy of being together on this tangled lawn, with the wide level moor before them and the the blue mountains beyond. They were still sitting there, when Carrie came back from Fort William. Her greenish eyes looked quickly at the pair of them and brightened.

“So that’s settled at last,” she said.

Myrtle nodded.

“Carrie darling, I wonder how you understood so well,” she murmured.

“I just guessed somehow. Of course I am three years older than you,” Carrie reminded her.

“I’m glad you’re my sister-in-law,” Myrtle exclaimed. “For lots of reasons,” she added softly.

Carrie smiled. With those four words Myrtle had repaid her own generosity in like measure.

“It’s all very well for you two to be so pleased about everything,” said the poet. “But what kind of a clown will I feel when I tell Mr Royde?”

“Oh, don’t call Chester Mr Royde,” the wife and sister expostulated with one voice.

“Never mind about what I call him,” said Alan glumly. “What kind of a clown will I feel when I tell him about me and his sister?”

“But Chester liked your tartan so much,” said Carrie.

“Yes, he adored your kilt,” Myrtle added.

“You’re not going to marry my kilt. You’re going to marry what’s inside the kilt.”

Myrtle laughed, and the poet blushed.

“You know fine what I mean,” he muttered like an embarrassed schoolboy.

“Oh, I’ve got the most wonderful idea,” Carrie ejaculated suddenly. “Oh, it’s the most wonderful idea anybody ever heard! Listen. I know what Alan must do to impress Chester. Somehow or other he must rescue him from the hikers. Oh, it’ll be just like one of those books men enjoy reading. Chester coining forward and shaking Alan by the hand and telling him he’ll never forget the way he rescued him against fearful odds. And Alan will blush and say it was nothing, but anyway he’d go through worse than that to rescue the brother of Myrtle Royde. And then Chester’ll look kind of surprised for a moment and then it’ll dawn on him what’s happened and he’ll squeeze Alan’s hand in a brotherly grip and say he only wished he had two sisters so as he could give them both to his rescuer.”

“What would he want to give Alan two sisters for?” Myrtle asked indignantly. “He isn’t a Mormon.”

“I really am serious about rescuing Chester from the hikers,” Carrie insisted. “Didn’t you say you thought he might be in the Prince’s Cave on Ben Booey?”

“Yes. Uaimh na Phrionnsa,” said Alan.

Myrtle threw her arms round him and kissed him. “Oh, Alan, I do love you when you talk Gaelic. Now say the name of the other cave.”

He obliged, and she kissed him again.