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We’d better not turn up without you or Mrs. Huntly will consider she’s been flouted.”
    “His grandmother, you said. Hasn’t Stuart any parents?”
    “His father was killed in the war and a few years ago his mother married again. Her husband has to travel a great deal. He’s in the consular service or something like that, I think, and at present they’re in New York, or it may be Washington. His mother comes home sometimes on a visit, but Stuart prefers to live in Scotland.”
    “What does he do, then? Doesn’t he need to earn a living?” Judith was aware of an impelling curiosity that forced her to ask questions.
    “He wouldn’t starve if he idled, but actually he works really hard. The Huntlys own most of Kylsaig as well as very large estates on the mainland, so there’s plenty to keep him busy.”
    “Yes. Mrs. Drummond told me how he had knocked two cottages into one for their home.”
    “He’s quite ambitious to restore prosperity to Kylsaig. He’s trying to get Andy interested in rebuilding the old quay on this side of the island. But I don’t see that would do much good. Nobody can stop the old people dying and the young ones leaving because there are so few jobs, so the crofts fall into decay anyway.”
    “But you and Andy are young ones,” Judith pointed out. “Together you’re keeping a croft from falling into a ruin. There’s Neil, too. He’s taken over a place.”
    “Neil says he’s come here for peace and quiet and he doesn’t want the island turned into a tourist resort.”
    “I suppose then he won’t mind if his own cottage falls apart as long as it’s a picturesque ruin.” Judith was surprised at her own acid comment. She made an effort to swerve away from the subject. “Well, tell me, what do we wear when we dine with this Scottish lord of the isles and his grandmother? Kilts?”
    Barbara giggled. “You don’t know what an enormous indiscretion that would be. They would certainly be offended.”
    The picnic which Barbara had arranged for the next day was a great success. Andy took the whole family in his dinghy to the beach beyond Cruban which Judith had glimpsed yesterday.
    “Later in the season, this beach gets frightfully crowded,” Barbara said when they landed. “Caravans everywhere and scarcely room to put down your vacuum flask without getting it knocked over by somebody else’s children.”
    “Robbie and Susan can be relied on to do their share of knocking things over,” Andy commented. “One of them usually barges in and upsets the milk or tips out the butter on to the shingle.”
    Judith watched the children now. Robbie, now nearly nine, was fair-haired and slender, a young, masculine edition of what Barbara must have been at that age. But Susan was small and dark, totally unlike her mother; her eyes were deep blue pools in a delicately-featured pale face framed with crisply curling dark hair. In a shrunken mustard yellow bathing suit, she trotted happily about the beach, fetching and carrying water or shingle in plastic bags at Robbie’s bidding.
    How could Barbara bemoan her lot when she and Andy possessed two such lovely children? Judith thought.
    Barbara decided not to bathe, but Judith accompanied Andy and the children and romped with them in the gentle waves.
    After lunch the two sisters lazed on the beach while the others pottered about looking for shells.
    Barbara sat up to apply more sun-protecting lotion to her long, slender legs, then lay back on the big towel, a cartwheel hat embroidered with multi-coloured raffia flowers shading her face and neck.
    “You’re lucky, Judy, that you don’t burn to an unbecoming lobster shade as soon as there’s a fine sunny spell.”
    Judith rolled over on her towel and propped herself on her elbows. “I think you’re lucky, too. When I’m back in London and the streets are like an oven, I shall envy you —bathing whenever you feel like it, or being able to go out in a boat.”
    Barbara’s eyebrows