Mrs. Finlayson took us out after tea to see the garden and tennis-court and the game-larder. "I always like a walled garden," she said; "it is so stylish." Mr. Finlayson found a reflected glory even in the loch and the hills, and he waved his fat hand towards them, and said: "We are able to do you a nice bit of view here, aren't we?"
"I tell papa," said Mrs. Finlayson, "that he will ruin the girls for anything else after this. The only thing we regret is the want of society. However, a few of the best people round about have called, and we are giving quite an informal little dinner-party to-morrow night."
Mrs. Finlayson then invited us to dinner, and when we hesitated, on the plea that we should have one or two friends with us, Mrs. Finlayson, in the most hospitable manner possible, said that she always had a "profusion on their own table," so there was nothing for it but to accept her invitation.
The dinner was one of those rather purposeless feasts which are given in the country, and the Finlaysons' neighbours who had been bidden to it bore upon their faces the peculiarly homeless look which one observes in the expressions of one's men friends especially, when they go out to a rural dinner--the look that says as plainly as possible that they are moving about in worlds not realized nor found particularly comfortable, and that they would infinitely prefer their own armchairs at home.
The minister took Palestrina in to dinner, and occupied himself throughout the evening by putting the most searching questions to her of an inquisitive nature. He asked how many servants we had, whether we were satisfied with our cook, where we came from, and why we had come. And he did it all with such keen interest and intelligence that Palestrina admitted that she really had felt flattered rather than provoked. His friend Evan Sinclair, who, having let his house to the Finlaysons, is living on a little farm close by, contradicted everything that the minister said, and the two quarrelled the whole evening.
Old Tyne Drum, who lives a good many miles away, but who with his wife had already been to call upon us, brewed himself the very largest glasses of whisky-toddy that I have ever seen, even on a big night at mess, and he proposed healths and drank the steaming mixture throughout dinner in a very commendable national spirit. His piper, who stood behind his chair, refused at last to pour out any further libations, and I heard him mutter to himself, "Ye'll no need tae say that Sandy Macnichol ever helpit ye tae the deil."