“Oh, Miss Donaldson,” said Dorinda-“I’ve got it!”

“The job you were inquiring after?”

Twenty years in London had done nothing to deprive Euphemia Donaldson of her Scottish tongue.

Dorinda nodded.

“I’ve got it!”

“It wouldn’t be in Scotland?”

Dorinda shook her head.

There was a wistful gleam in Miss Donaldson’s eye.

“I was thinking if you’d relatives there, it would be nice-”

Dorinda shook her head again.

“But I haven’t.”

Miss Donaldson looked disappointed.

“That’s strange too, and you so young. Now take me-it’s more than twenty years since I came south, and I’ve five-and-thirty relations in Scotland -counting third and fourth cousins.” The r’s were like a drum-roll.

Dorinda laughed.

“I wasn’t counting cousins.”

“Ah, your mother was English, you were telling me-that would account for it. Now that Mr. Leigh that was calling for you once or twice, he’d be on your mother’s side?”

“A long way off,” said Dorinda. “You know-the sort that’s a cousin if you want them to be, and not a relation at all if you don’t.”

Miss Donaldson commented on this with the old Scottish word “Imphm,” which can mean almost anything. In this case it implied that she knew what Dorinda meant and disapproved of it, adding with a fresh roll of drums,

“Relations can be awful disagreeable, but blood’s thicker than water and theyll stand by you at a pinch.”

Dorinda felt that honour was now satisfied. She smiled her wide, attractive smile and moved on.

“I was just going to telephone.”

Miss Donaldson said, “Imphm,” and withdrew into the dismal hole which she called her office.

Dorinda bounded into the telephone-box and shut the door.