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"This is
an hearg
!" she announced, holding up her latest effort for Elizabeth's inspection. "The Rain Goose. Do you know about him? He walks beside the loch when there's a storm coming. I often see him, and I think he's very beautiful. You can have him when he's finished, if you really want him," she added, aware of Elizabeth's admiration. "I don't always want to sell what I make."

"If you give them all away you won't have anything left for the craft shop," Elizabeth pointed out.

"That's true, but I don't really give many away," Jenny said. "Only to people who will appreciate them. You see, they are something I care about, something that's part of me. It's like giving away your heart You must be very sure first, otherwise you're apt to get hurt."

"Yes, I know," Elizabeth agreed. "I'll take great care of the Rain Goose, Jenny."

They walked through the gardens towards the hill where they could see the chimneys of Windy Brae through the trees.

"Do you want to see the ponies?" Jenny asked.

Elizabeth hesitated.

"Natalie won't be at the stables," said Jenny. "They're quite a way from the cottage. Really, they are part of Kilchoan, but Natalie has the use of them. She's always been crazy about horses, so it was the obvious thing for her to do when we had to leave the farm. It makes her feel independent."

Apart from the free use of the Kilchoan stables, Elizabeth mused, knowing full well what Natalie Hodge would feel about being indebted to anyone. If her older sister had married into the Abercrombie family it would have been quite different, of course, but to accept what could easily be called charity was a humbling experience.

They approached the stable block through a stone archway set in the high, surrounding wall and all at once Natalie was there. She had been grooming a horse and she stiffened perceptibly when she heard their voices, turning slowly with the curry-comb in her hand.

"What do you want?" she asked.

"Grand'mere thought Elizabeth should be shown round and I thought she might like to see the ponies," Jenny explained lightly. "We were heading this way, so we looked in. I had no idea you would be here," she added, "but don't let us stop you if you're busy. We're really on our way up the glen."

Natalie returned to her grooming.

"I'm glad someone has time to spare," she remarked unpleasantly, "but so long as you don't want a horse to ride you can please yourself."

"Are you completely booked up?" Jenny asked. "With riding lessons, I mean."

"More or less." Natalie kept her back turned. "The Boyes children are at the hotel for two week? and the trekking ponies will be going down at the end of the month."

"Which leaves Randy," Jenny mused. "He might be a bit big for Elizabeth."

Her sister laughed.

"She could always try to ride him," she said with an edge of contempt in her voice. "Australians can do anything with horses, I understand."

"Not this Australian," Elizabeth hastened to assure her, "I'm no expert, but I've trekked at home and loved it. All the same, if you don't want to risk one of your horses I wouldn't dream of insisting."

"Grand'mere
wants
her to have a horse," Jenny interrupted tactlessly. "After all, some of them belong to Charles."

A slow flush mantled Natalie's cheeks.

"I'm well aware of the humiliating fact," she returned icily. "I make money out of other people's property, but one day I hope to have a string of my own,
and
my own stables."

"Oh, dear!" Jenny murmured as she turned away. "I do seem to aggravate my sister by saying the wrong thing all the time. Natalie hates to be reminded how dependent we are on the Abercrombies when we're not even related to them. It would have been different if Charles and Claire had married," she ran on. "Then he would have been family and Nat wouldn't have minded so much. As things are, she feels that everything Charles and Mrs. Abercrombie does for us is done because of that dreadful accident, and it isn't, really. It's just that they're essentially kind people and my mother and Grand'mere were very close. They were both very, very generous."

She led the way along the line of loose-boxes, admiring the ponies, while Natalie scowled at them from the far end of the yard.

"Let's go," she said, at last. "I hate to feel
de trop
, as Grand'mere would say."

"I wouldn't like to get in your sister's way," Elizabeth confessed as they went up the glen. "Somehow I feel that she resents me being here."

"She has nothing to do with Kilchoan; she has no right to make you feel unwanted," said Jenny. "She's just—rather jealous, I think. Jealous of everybody," she concluded.

"There's no reason why she should be," Elizabeth said. "She appears to have a very thriving business on her hands."

"She only had one pony to start with," Jenny explained. "Charles bought the others, but gradually she has paid him back. The fact that she doesn't own them all rankles a bit because she is so terribly anxious to be independent. I agree with her up to a point," she sighed, "but she really ought to be more grateful to Charles. He doesn't resent anything he does for us—because of Claire. I don't think he'll ever forget her," she added. "She was a truly wonderful person."

Elizabeth allowed the remark to fall into a deepening silence, thinking of Claire and Charles's love for her. Quite apart from a younger sister's genuine admiration, Jenny knew that Claire had been exceptional, probably looking to her for guidance most of her life. Yet, when things had gone really wrong for her, Claire had not been there to help and she had turned to Adele Abercrombie instead. Adele and Charles. Which meant that Jenny could be half in love with Charles without realising the fact. And it was a fact which Natalie's sharper perception recognised and wanted to further.

They finished their tour of the glen, walking down the narrow road beside a swift-flowing burn where the water gushed over rocks, eddying into deep brown pools which were a fisherman's paradise. Hazel and birch and rowan crowded the steep banks on either side, but here and there they came upon a small clearing where the rocks were steep but accessible, brooding over silent pools.

"This is Grand'mere's special place," Jenny announced at one of them. "She comes here often and rarely goes home without a fish. She
is
a remarkable old lady, Elizabeth. She never gives up,"

"Isn't it rather dangerous for her, coming here alone ?" Elizabeth asked.

"Oh, I'm generally with her," Jenny assured her. "I can't fish—at least, not very well—and secretly I don't like it. I hate to see the poor things struggling on the end of a hook and never winning."

"Surely there are the odd ones that get away!"

"Not from Grand'mere!" Jenny laughed. "Well, very rarely. She plays them as if her life depended on it, holding on like grim death because she's so determined. If she hooks a big one she'll play it till one or other of them is exhausted. She's very strong, you know. Not just strong-willed, but strong physically, too."

Jenny's admiration for her benefactress was complete. Probably her own crippled state had something to do with it, because she seemed to accept strength as perfection, although Elizabeth could imagine her standing up to Natalie if she considered it necessary.

They strolled back to the house, arriving in time for tea.

"I'm going fishing tomorrow," Mrs. Abercrombie informed them. "You can both come with me, if you like. We'll start out early in the morning."

Elizabeth mentioned the pile of letters waiting to be typed.

"We can deal with diem on Wednesday and you and Jenny can post them in Callender on Thursday afternoon when you go shopping. Murdoch will take you."

"Can't you come?" Jenny asked.

"Not if I fish again on Friday," Adele decided. "I've neglected the village long enough, so I must have the church ladies to tea on Thursday."

The pattern of the week was set, the week of Charles's absence. Wondering if he really meant to return at the week-end, Elizabeth fell in with the ways of his grandmother's household, working when Mrs. Abercrombie needed her and sitting with one of Jenny's sketching-blocks on her knees the following afternoon while Adele stood in the shallow water in her favourite fishing spot, casting her line in vain that first day. Jenny painted in fits and starts, her easel balanced between two sheltering rocks, but Elizabeth was finding a certain amount of difficulty with perspective and was slow to learn.

On the Thursday afternoon James Murdoch brought the car to the front door.

"Don't forget the fruit," Adele called as they drove away. "Oranges and apples, and grapes if they have any."

They had seen very little of Natalie during the week and when they passed her on the main road leading a string of ponies she gave them no more than a brief wave of her hand which seemed to dismiss them.

"She's on her way to the hotel," Jenny explained. "There are four children there just now on holiday. They come every year and Nat has taught them all to ride."

Her sister disappeared over the horizon, leading the ponies to their destination, and Elizabeth settled back in the car to enjoy the remainder of the afternoon.

Jenny was an ideal guide.

"We go right through the Trossachs," she explained, naming the great mountains ahead of them as they journeyed northwards. "Loch Katrine is over there, and one day we must take you to the Goblin's Cave, if Charles will drive us. Murdoch goes straight to Callender and straight back," she whispered. "He has absolutely no imagination!"

Elizabeth was in her dement as they drove among the hills on a wide road skirting Loch Achray and deep, lovely Venachar before they finally came to their destination.

Callender delighted her with its wide main street and beautiful shops where they browsed contentedly for an hour after they had placed Mrs. Abercrombie's order at the grocer's.

"Instead of tea, let's have some ice-cream," Jenny suggested. "I'm really quite silly about it, and I know a super place where we can have it with raspberry sauce."

In a good many ways Jenny was still a child, and they sat over their ices until Murdoch returned with the car.

"I've picked up the messages," he told them, "so it's home again as soon as you're ready."

Jenny grinned at Elizabeth.

"What did I tell you?" she asked.

They did, however, drive back by another road, past the Lake of Menteith.

"The only
lake
in the whole of Scotland!" Jenny told her.

Nearing Kilchoan they saw the string of ponies again, with Natalie leading them, but this time a tall, broad-shouldered man was walking beside her. Murdoch put the car into second gear,
coming
up behind them, and Natalie turned, her face dark as thunder.

"She seemed angry," Elizabeth observed.

"She was furious," Jenny answered. "That was Will Beatty with her. She pretends to despise Will, but I've seen her walking with him before. He knows a lot about horses, but nobody expects Nat to take his advice."

"He's a good grieve," Murdoch observed from the front seat. "Your sister would do well to listen to him occasionally."

Jenny considered the bluntly-offered opinion.

"I guess you're right," she said. "As a matter of fact, I like Will very much. I wonder if he'll stay at Kilchoan."

"Not if he can get a promotion elsewhere, and I'm thinking that might not be long in coming." Murdoch put the car to the hill. "He won't stay second-in-command for ever, I'm sure."

The church ladies had departed by the time they reached Kilchoan, but the dinner-time conversation centred around their activities till Mrs. Abercrombie announced:

"I had a phone call from Charles this afternoon. He's coming for the week-end."

Elizabeth's heart seemed to miss a beat, although Charles's name was always in the forefront of her mind.

"That will put paid to your fishing expedition," Jenny suggested.

"Au contraire!"
declared Adele. 'It will make it all the more necessary. We will bring in a nice salmon for his dinner."

Jenny glanced in Elizabeth's direction.

"Do you like salmon?" she asked.

"I've never tasted one from a Scottish river."

"Thai it's time you had," Adele declared. "Charles more or less expects it to be on the menu when he comes home."

They set out the following morning, suitably equipped for the occasion. Jenny, who had decided to paint, stowed her easel in the back of the car, adding her sketching-block for Elizabeth, while Mrs. Abercrombie appeared in a woollen track-suit over which she wore a leather jerkin and a waterproof jacket. Her waders and fishing tackle went in beside Jenny's easel.

Murdoch drove them half way up the glen to the spot on the river bank where Adele liked to fish.

"We've got sandwiches and a flask," she told him. "You can come back for us at four o'clock."

"You won't be fishing late?" he enquired.

"No. If I haven't landed something worth while by four o'clock I'll give up."

"I'll be taking the car down to the station," he reminded her.

"You can collect us on your way back."

Murdoch nodded.

"See and have a good day," he said. "There's a nice light."

Jenny set up her easel while Mrs. Abercrombie struggled into her waders. She would be standing thigh-deep in the water all morning and had to be sure that she would be warm.

"A cold fisherman never has any luck!" she smiled, her eyes alight with enthusiasm for a lifetime's hobby. "Get a rug over your knees, Jenny, if you're going to paint for any length of time," she added. "You, too, Elizabeth."

"I'm not very good." Elizabeth sat down on the travelling-rug which Jenny had spread for her, "I'm willing to try, though."

"The spirit is the main thing," said Jenny.

Mrs. Abercrombie waded upstream and Jenny unfolded the little canvas stool which she used as her easel.