ABSTRACT
Margot Vane and her brother Ronald, a writer, travel to Scotland where Margot hopes the air will benefit her brother’s health and writing. Nature had provided Margot ‘with a sweet thrush-like voice’; she was not a talented pianist, ‘but what she could play she played by heart’. When gloomy Mr Macalister, a guest at the inn, needs amusement, Margot plays on the parlour’s ‘wheezy old piano’, then sings his favourite Scotch airs. As luck would have it, he is passionate about music and became ‘quite genial and agreeable in the course of that musical hour’ (p. 210).
