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to discover where she was heading, I might have learned something to my advantage about Father McQuinn.
    An elderly man hurried breathlessly through the barrier, red-faced with the bewildered and anxious look of one who is meeting a passenger for the first time.
    His complexion suggested the farmer despite the smart bowler hat, apparently seldom worn, since his hand went to it constantly as if its rare presence nagged him. Then walking along the platform he tugged at the jacket of that handsome tweed suit, suggesting Sunday best made long ago for a fitting now considerably more ample than the tailor’s original measurements.
    Although shorter and more thickset, Andrew Macmerry’s resemblance to Jack was unmistakable. I smiled in his direction and he hurried towards me.
    ‘Rose, is it?’ His hand sought the familiar farmer’s bonnet and instead encountered the bowler hat. Raising it politely, face sweating with anxiety, he clasped my hand in a powerful grip.
    Introductions over, he laughed and picked up my luggage. ‘What a relief, I would have kenned you anywhere, lass. You’re exactly like Jack told us.’ A sideways approving glance. ‘Except that he didn’t do you justice.’ Added shyly, with a slightly embarrassed cough, ‘You’re far bonnier, lass, far bonnier that we thought you’d be.’
    ‘We’ indicated the missing Mrs Macmerry. As I paused and looked around, interpreting my glance, he said hastily:
    ‘The farm’s a wee step from the station so Jack’s ma has taken the chance of a bit of shopping. Ah, here she is now.’
    The picture in townsfolk’s mind is of farmer’s wives rosy and rotund. Jess Macmerry however was as far from that description as could be imagined. Taller than her husband and considerably thinner, her grey hair in a tight no-nonsense bun above a deep frown and a long rather sharp red nose, the kind that suggested a perpetual drip in winter weather.
    As we shook hands there was a smile that might have come through a tea-strainer and walking towards the station exit, the shrewd all-enveloping glance told me much about her character,as I read her summing up her son’s intended.
    She was a disappointed woman. She had firmly decided long ago that had this Rose McQuinn even sprouted angel’s wings and borne a message from heaven itself she would still have been no fit mate for Jack Macmerry. A widow woman, I was soiled goods, second-hand, while she had set her heart on a fresh young virgin as daughter-in-law, the only decent and suitable choice for her one and only beloved bairn.
    Seated together with Mr Macmerry in the driving seat of the dog-cart, she resumed her relentless scrutiny.
    ‘You’re much smaller than we thought you’d be,’ she said candidly and, with the expert eye of the farming community, that quick glance over my figure was assessing whether it was strong enough to produce – among an assorted bevy of lively and healthy grandchildren – a lad to some day inherit the farm.
    ‘There’s grand stuff in small bundles, Jess.’ I detected mild reproach as Mr Macmerry came to my rescue. ‘And that’s a right bonny head o’ hair ye have on ye, lass,’ he added gallantly.
    It was my turn to be embarrassed by my wild mop of yellow hair inexpertly tamed under a small and now, alas, unfashionable bonnet bought in a moment of optimism in an Edinburgh millinery sale.
    ‘I’ve always been told that a lot of hair drains your strength away.’ Mrs Macmerry’s sniff was a stern reminder that a man’s admiring eye could be deceived and turning to me: ‘Jack tells us you’re living alone in Edinburgh. In some old tower on Arthur’s Seat.’
    Her tone conveyed that living alone was not quite the done thing, and the tower unseen was exceptionally squalid and extremely ruined.
    ‘I would be terrified sleeping in a place like that all on my own. Doesn’t it scare you?’
    ‘It doesn’t bother me in the least. I feel quite safe.’
    She seemed surprised by this and I