The hall at the Moorhead Inn seemed very homelike to Jim Airth and Myra, as they stood together looking around it, on their arrival.

Jim had set his heart upon bringing his wife there, on the evening of their wedding day. Therefore they had left town immediately after the ceremony; dined en route, and now stood, as they had so often stood before when bidding one another good-night, in the lamp-light, beside the marble table.

“Oh, Jim dear,” whispered Myra, throwing back her travelling cloak, “doesn’t it all seem natural? Look at the old clock! Five minutes past ten. The Miss Murgatroyds must have gone up, in staid procession, exactly four minutes ago. Look at the stag’s head! There is the antler, on the topmost point of which you always hung your cap.”

“Myra

“Yes, dear. Oh, I hope the Murgatroyds are still here. Let’s look in the book.... Yes, see! Here are their names with date of arrival, but none of departure. And, oh, dearest, here is ‘Jim Airth,’ as I first saw it written; and look at ‘Mrs. O’Mara’ just beneath it! How well I remember glancing back from the turn of the staircase, seeing you come out and read it, and wishing I had written it better. You can set me plenty of copies now, Jim.”

“Myra!

“Yes, dear. Do you know I am going to fly up and unpack. Then I will come out to the honeysuckle arbour and sit with you while you smoke. And we need not mind being late; because the dear ladies, not knowing we have returned, will not all be sleeping with doors ajar. But oh Jim, you must however late it is plump your boots out into the passage, just for the fun of making Miss Susannah’s heart jump unexpectedly.”

“Myra! Oh, I say! My wife

“Yes, darling, I know! But I am perfectly certain ‘Aunt Ingleby’ is peeping out of her little office at the end of the passage; also, Polly has finished helping Sam place our luggage upstairs, and I can feel her, hanging over the top banisters! Be patient for just a little while, my Jim. Let’s put our names in the visitors’ book. What shall we write? Really we shall be obliged eventually to let them know who you are. Think what an excitement for the Miss Murgatroyds. But, just for once, I am going to write myself down by the name, of all others, I have most wished to bear.”

So, smiling gaily up at her husband, then bending over the table to hide her happy face from the adoration of his eyes, the newly-made Countess of Airth and Monteith took up the pen; and, without pausing to remove her glove, wrote in the visitors’ book of the Moorhead Inn, in the clear bold handwriting peculiarly her own:

Mrs. Jim Airth