The Argosy — page 109: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

94 The Mystery of Allan Grale. somehow she was very curious about George Vivian’s visits to Edin- burgh. Mrs. Grale, always persuadable, and domineered over by Mary Anne, got ready and they started. At the Court they found General and Mrs. Vivian and George all sitting on the terrace outside the drawing-room windows. ‘The General was enjoying the sunshine. More chairs were brought out for the visitors, and afternoon tea was ordered. ‘‘The climate seems to be getting worse and worse,” observed Mrs. Grale, in answer to a remark of the General’s. ‘‘ 1 never knew such a rainy time as this, close upon midsummer.” ‘‘ Mr. Vivian used up all the sunshine during his last holiday,” said Mary Anne, laughing. ‘‘ I remember we had delicious weather while you were in Edinburgh,” she went on, turning to George. ‘I think there was scarcely a shower all the while you were away.” ‘¢ Not one—at least not in the daytime,” he answered. ‘ During all my voyage North the sea was like glass.” That voyage was a puzzle to Mary Anne. She did not understand that just now. George had to use a health pretext to get any freedom at all. It seemed to her, with her conscious knowledge of that scene in the mercer’s shop, that possibly there was some attraction for the young man in the North. Yet if so, how came he to waste so much of such a brief holiday in the solitary tedium of a voyage ? “Had you many fellow passengers on board?” she asked care- lessly. | “Very few,” he replied. ‘The holiday season had not begun. ‘“ There were some young people going down to school at St. Andrew’s— some Americans fresh from New York, and two missionary ladies home on leave from India. So we were ‘quite select’ in the saloon. I thought my journey was to be rather dreary at first, but the Indian ladies and the Americans proved very interesting and pleasant.” This certainly did not look as though George had joined any party. Yet if the ‘‘ attraction” was in Edinburgh, surely that had not been the destination of the rich and pretty but quite common-place pur- chases she had seen him make in London. Every article on the Bond Street counter might have been readily procured in Prince’s Street. — “What a magnificent city Edinburgh is,” said Miss Grale. ‘‘ We have only stayed there a few days en route to the West Coast and to Skye. I suppose it is a pleasant place to live in? One always hears a great deal of Edinburgh society.” “In that respect it is not what it was in the past,” answered George. ‘“‘ Now-a-days, the city is at once too large and too small. ‘There is all the difference between its past and its present that there is between its Old Town and its New.” ‘“‘ Surely the New Town is an improvement on the Old!” exclaimed Mary Anne, astonished. ‘‘I remember being quite struck with the CONIC MOOOlKS (E(©)