It was Fabian Scott who, being by his profession less of a free agent than any other member of my little circle of friends, fixed the date of their yearly visit. As soon as he made known to me the first day when he would be free, I summoned the rest, and not one of them had ever yet failed me. Fabian wrote to me this year, giving the fifteenth of August as the day on which the closing of the theatre at which he was playing would leave him free.

The news of the expected arrivals quickly reached the ears of Mrs. Ellmer, who came skipping along the garden towards me one morning about a week before the visit, and attacked me at once with much vivacity.

'Aha!' she began, 'and so we were to be left in ignorance of the gay doings, were we?'

'If you allude to the meeting of half a dozen old fogeys on the fifteenth, Mrs. Ellmer, I assure you I was coming to the cottage to tell you about it. But we shall be about as sportive as a gathering of the British ArchÆological Association, and as we shall be out on the moors all day, I am afraid you won't find the place much livelier than usual. I think,' I added, coming to the pith of the matter with some feeling of awkwardness, 'that you had better keep Miss Babiole more—more with you, while—while the gentlemen are here. Or—or if you would like a trip to the seaside we might see about a couple of weeks at Muchalls or Stonehaven, and that would give us an opportunity of—of having the cottage whitewashed, you know,' I finished up, with a sudden gleam of tardy inventive genius.

The fact was, I had begun to tingle at the thought of the merciless 'chaff'—as much worse to bear than slander as the stigma of fool is than that of rogue—which the importation of my fair tenants would bring down upon me. Besides, though my four visitors were all old friends, and very good fellows, yet a pretty face may work such Circe-like wonders, even in the best of us, that I thought it better that our bachelor loneliness should be, as before, untempered by the smiles of any woman lovelier than Janet. But Mrs. Ellmer, at my hesitating suggestion, grew rigid and haughty.

'Of course, Mr. Maude,' she said, 'if you wish now to make use of the cottage my daughter and I have done our best to keep in order for you, we shall be ready to pack up at any time. We can go to-morrow, if you like. I have no doubt that I shall be able to find an opening for the autumn season with some company.'

'No, no, no!' interrupted I emphatically and with some impatience, 'Pray do not think of such a thing. There is plenty of room in my own place for all my friends. My sole object in making the suggestion I did was to prevent your being pestered with the attentions of a lot of rough sportsmen, who, when they were tired of shooting, would find nothing better to do than to worry you and Miss Babiole to death. And you remember,' I ended, as a happy thought, 'how, when you came here, you insisted on privacy.'

'One may have too much even of such a good thing as one's own society,' said she, with an affected little laugh. 'I think I could bear a little attention now, with much equanimity, even from a sportsman who "could find nothing better to do." Of course, I could expect no more than that from gentlemen of such rank as your guests,' she added, rather venomously. 'But for a change even that might be acceptable.'

Good heavens! The woman would not understand me.

'But Babiole!' I suggested quietly.

'Babiole is only a child; but even if she were not, a daughter of mine would be perfectly able to take care of herself, Mr. Maude.'

After this snub, I could only bow and take myself off, spending the interval before my guests' arrival in schooling myself for the approaching ordeal.

The first to arrive on the fifteenth were Lord Edgar Normanton and Mr. Richard Fussell, the latter, anxious to make the most of his annual taste of rank and fashion, having lain in wait for the former at King's Cross, and insisted on bearing him company during the entire journey. I met them at Ballater station at 2.15 in the afternoon, and was sorry to hear from Edgar, who never looked otherwise than the picture of robust health, and who was, moreover, getting fat, that he was far from well.

'I tell his lordship that he should take rowing exercise. Nothing like a good pull every day on the river to keep a man in condition,' urged Mr. Fussell, who was fifty inches round what had once been his waist, and who seemed to radiate health and happiness.

They informed me that Fabian Scott had also travelled up by the night mail, but in another compartment; so I went to meet the train, which came into Ballater at 5.50, and found both Fabian and Mr. Maurice Browne disputing so violently that they had forgotten to get out. Fabian had indeed taken advantage of the stopping of the train to stride up and down the confined area of the railway carriage, gesticulating violently with his hatbox, rug, gun, and various other unconsidered trifles. I guessed that they could only have travelled together from Aberdeen, for there had been no bloodshed. They had been having a little discussion on realism in art, of which Maurice Browne was an ardent disciple. They were still hard at it, in terms unfit for publication, when I mounted the step and put my head in at the window. Excitable Fabian, with his keen eyes still flashing indignation with 'exotic filth,' shook my hand till he brought on partial paralysis of that member, while he fired a last shot into his less erratic opponent.

'No, sir,' he protested vehemently, 'I deny neither your ability nor your good faith, nor those of your French master; but I have the same objection to the fictions of your school, as works of art, as I should have to the performance of a play written by cripples for cripples. It would be a curiosity, sir, and might attract crowds of morbid-minded people, besides cripples; but it would be none the less a disgusting and degraded exhibition, antagonistic to nature and truth, to which the feeblest "virtue victorious and vice vanquished" melodrama would be as day unto night. With minds attuned to low thoughts, you seek for low things, and degrade them still further by your treatment. You have a philosophy, I admit, sir, but it is the philosophy of the hog.'

And, having poured out this persuasive little harangue with such volubility that not even an Irishman could get in a word edgeways, Fabian allowed himself to be enticed on to the platform, and began asking me questions about myself with childlike affection. Maurice Browne followed, somewhat refreshed by this torrent of abuse, since the aim of his literary ambition was rather to scandalise than to convince. He was tall, thin, and unhealthy-looking, with a pallid face and pink-rimmed eyes, and an appearance altogether unfortunate in the propagator of a new cult. I believe he was, on the whole, fonder of me than Fabian was. My disastrous ugliness appealed to his distaste for the beautiful, and having once, as a complete stranger, very generously come to my aid in a difficulty, he felt ever after the natural and kindly human liking for a fellow-creature who has given one an opportunity of posing as the deputy of God. These two gentlemen, with their strong and aggressive opinions, formed the disturbing element in our yearly meeting, and, each being always at deadly feud with somebody else, might be reckoned on to keep the fun alive. Both talked to me, and me alone, on our way to the house, with such sly hits at one another as their wit or their malice could suggest. Fabian raved about the effects of descending sun on heather and pine-covered hills, Maurice Browne bemoaned the stony poverty of the cottages, and opined that constant intermarriages between the inhabitants had reduced the scanty population to idiots. Then Fabian told me how many inquiries had been made about me by old acquaintances, who still hoped I would some day return from the wilds, and Maurice instantly tempered my satisfaction by asking me if I had heard that the Earl of Saxmundham was going to divorce his wife. The question gave me a great shock, not so much on account of the blow it dealt at an old idol still conventionally enthroned in my memory as the last love of my life, as because I knew how much distress such a report must cause to poor old Edgar.

I was quite relieved, on entering the drive, to meet my stalwart friend and his faithful companion, both very merry over some joke which had already made Mr. Fussell purple in the face. On seeing us they burst out laughing afresh. I guessed what the joke was.

'Deuced lonely up here, isn't it?' said Mr. Fussell to me. 'No society, nothing but books, books,—except for one short fortnight in the year. Eh, Maude?'

'Eh? eh? what's this?' said Fabian.

'His only books are woman's looks, and I wonder they didn't teach him the folly of bringing a band of gay and dashing cavaliers to read them too,' said Edgar.

Fabian turned slowly round to me, with a look of extreme pain, and shook his head mournfully.

'Oh, what a tangled web we weave,' he murmured sorrowfully, and then began to dance the Highland fling, with his rug tartanwise over his shoulder.

Maurice Browne gravely cocked his hat, pulled down his cuffs, buttoned up his coat, and requesting Edgar to carry his bag, proceeded up the drive with his hands in his pockets, whistling.

In fact the whole quartett had given themselves up to ribald gaiety at my expense, and my explanation that I had merely given a poor lady and her daughter shelter for the winter in an unused cottage only provoked another explosion. It was understood that at these bachelor meetings all rules of social decorum should be scrupulously violated, so there was nothing for it but to join in the mirth with the best grace I could.

'You know who it is,' I said, half aside, to Fabian, hoping to turn him at least into an ally. 'It's poor little Mrs. Ellmer, the wife of that drunken painter.'

But Fabian was flinty. Turning towards the rest, with his expiring Romeo expression, he wailed: 'Oh, gentlemen, he is adding insult to injury; he is loading with abuse the bereaved husband of this lady to whom he has given shelter for the winter!'

'Which winter? How much winter?' asked the others.

The more they saw that I was getting really pained by their chaff the worse it became, until Fabian, stalking gravely up to Ferguson, who stood on the doorstep, pointed tragically in the direction of nowhere in particular, and said, in a sepulchral voice—

'You are a Scotchman, so am I. I have been pained by stories of orgies, debaucheries, and general goings on in this neighbourhood. Tell me, on your word as a fellow-countryman, can these gentlemen and myself, as churchwardens and Sunday-school teachers, enter this house without loss of self-respect?'

'I dinna ken aboot self-respect, gentlemen; but if you don't come in, ye'll stand the loss of a varra good dinner,' answered Ferguson, with a welcoming twinkle in his eyes.

'I am satisfied,' said Fabian, entering precipitately.

And the rest followed without scruple.

At dinner, to my relief, they found other subjects for their tongues to wag upon; for Maurice Browne, never being satisfied long with any topic but literary 'shop,' brought realism up again, and there ensued a triangular battle. For Edgar, who, now that he had passed the age and weight for cricket, had grown distressingly intellectual, was an ardent admirer of the modern American school of fiction in which nothing ever happens, and in which nobody is anything in particular for long at a time. He hungrily devoured all the works of that desperately clever gentleman who maintains that 'a woman standing by a table is an incident,' and looked down from an eminence of six feet two of unqualified disdain on the 'battle, murder, and sudden death' school on the one hand, and on the 'all uncleanness' school on the other. Not at all crushed by his scorn, Fabian retorted by calling the American school the 'School of Foolish Talking,' and the battle raged till long past sundown, Mr. Fussell and I watching the case on behalf of the general reader, and passing the decanters till the various schools all became 'mixed schools.'

At this point a diversion was created by a fleeting view caught through the door by Fabian, of Janet carrying dishes away to the kitchen. He heaved a sigh of relief, and, with upturned eyes, breathed gently, 'I would trust him another winter!'

I had bought a piano at Aberdeen, as Fabian had spread a report that he could play, while all my guests nursed themselves in the belief that they could sing. The instrument had been placed in a corner of my study against the wall. But the Philistinism of this so shocked Fabian that he instantly directed its removal into the middle of the room. This necessitated a re-disposal of most of the furniture. The centre table was piled high with my private papers. Fabian looked hastily through these, and, observing, 'I don't see anything here we need keep,' tumbled them all into the grate where the fire, indispensable as evening draws on in the Highlands, was burning. Mechanically, I saved what I could, while Fabian's subversive orders were being carried out round me. After a few minutes' hard work, all my favourite objects were out of sight. Maurice Browne was reclining comfortably in my own particular chair, and most of the rest of the seats having been turned out into the hall as taking up too much room, I had to sit upon To-to's kennel. The curtains were also pulled down in deference to a suggestion of Browne's that they interfered with the full sound of the voice, but I wished they had been left up when the caterwauling began.

Mr. Fussell led off with 'The Stirrup Cup,' in deference to his being the eldest of the party, and also to purchase his non-intervention when the other performers should begin. It was some time before he got a fair start, being afflicted with hoarseness, which he attributed to the Highland air, and the rest unanimously to the Highland whiskey. When at last he warmed to his work, however, and said complacently that he was 'all right' now, they must have heard him at Aberdeen. He had a good baritone voice, the value of which was discounted by his total ignorance of the art of singing, his imperfect acquaintance with both the time and the words of his songs, and his belief that the louder one shouted the better one sang. When at last, crimson and panting, but proud of himself, he sat down amid the astonished comments of the company on the strength of the roof, Maurice Browne wailed forth in a cracked voice a rollicking Irish song to the accompaniment of 'Auld Robin Gray'; Fabian followed with no voice at all, but no end of expression, in a pathetic lovesong of his own composition, during which everybody went to look for some cigars he had in his overcoat pocket. I refused altogether to perform, and nobody pressed me; but I had my revenge. When Edgar, strung up to do or die, asked Fabian to accompany him with 'The Death of Nelson,' and rose with the modest belief that he should astonish them with a very fine bass, the first note was a deep-mouthed roar that broke down the last twig of our forbearance, and we all rose as one man and declared that we had had music enough. Poor Ta-ta, who had been turned out of the room at the beginning of the concert for emulating the first singer by a prolonged howl, was let in again, and relief having been given to everybody's artistic yearnings, we ended the evening with smoke and peace.

Next morning we were all early on the moors, where we distinguished ourselves in various ways. Fabian, who worked himself into a fearful state of excitement over the sport, shot much and often, but brought home nothing at all, and thanked Heaven, when calmness returned with the evening hours, for keeping his fellow-creatures out of the range of his wild gun. Maurice Browne made a good mixed bag of a hedgehog, a pee-wit, and a keeper's leg, and then complained that shooting was monotonous work. Edgar worked hard and gravely, but was so slow that for the most part the grouse were out of sight before he fired. Mr. Fussell did better, and attributed every failure to bring down his bird to his 'd——d glasses,' upon which Fabian hastened to ask him if he meant the glasses of the night before.

However, everybody but the keeper who was shot, declared himself delighted with the day's sport; but on the following morning Fabian and Maurice Browne seceded from the party and amused themselves, the former by sketching, the latter by learning by heart, by means of chats with ostlers and shopkeepers, the chronique scandaleuse of the neighbourhood; in the evening he triumphantly informed me that the morals of the lowest haunts in Paris were immaculate, compared to those of my simple Highland village. I am afraid this startling revelation had less effect upon me than a little incident which I witnessed next day.

I had been congratulating myself upon the fact that, though all my visitors vied with each other in attentions to Mrs. Ellmer, who had become, under the influence of this sudden rush of admirers, gayer and giddier than ever, they looked upon Babiole, as her mother had prophesied, merely as a little girl and of no account. But on the morning referred to, I came upon Fabian and the child together in my garden at the foot of the hill. He was fastening some roses in the front of her blue cotton frock, and when he had done so, and stepped back a few paces to admire the effect, he claimed a kiss as a reward for his trouble. She gave it him shyly but simply. She was only a child, of course, and his little sweetheart of six years ago; and the blush that rose in her cheeks when she caught sight of me was no sign of self-consciousness, for her colour came and went at the faintest emotion of surprise or pleasure. As for Fabian, he drew her hand through his arm, and came skipping towards me like a stage peasant.

'We're going to be married, Babiole and I, as soon as we've saved up money enough,' said he.

And the child laughed, delighted with this extravagant pleasantry.

But, though I laughed too, I didn't see any fun in it at all; for the remembrance that the time would come when this little blossom of youth and happiness and all things fresh and sweet would be plucked from the hillside, was not in the least amusing to me. And when this young artist proceeded to devote his mornings to long rambles with 'the child,' and his afternoons to making sketches of 'the child,' I thought his attentions would be much better bestowed on a grown-up person. But as Mrs. Ellmer saw nothing to censure in all this I could not interfere. It spoilt my yearly holiday for me, though, in an unaccountable fashion; and when at the end of a fortnight my guests went away, no regrets that I felt at their departure were so keen as my ridiculous annoyance on seeing that Fabian's farewell kiss to his little sweetheart left the child in tears.