In these young creatures the elder woman had kindled a flame of feeling which, when they parted from her and their school life--so she told them--was to take practical effect in work for their country, given with a proud and glad devotion.
But Pamela, leaving school at the end of July for the last time, after a surfeit of examinations, had been pronounced 'tired out' by an old aunt, a certain Lady Cassiobury, who came for long periodical visits to Mannering, and made a show of looking after her motherless niece.

Accordingly she had been packed off to Scotland for August to stay with a school friend, one of a large family in a large country house in the Highlands.

And there, roaming amid lochs and heather, with a band of young people, the majority of the men, of course, in the Army--young officers on short leave, or temporarily invalided, or boys of eighteen just starting their cadet training--she had spent a month full of emotions, not often expressed.

For generally she was shy and rather speechless, though none the less liked by her companions for that.

But many things sank deep with her; the beauty of mountain and stream; the character of some of the boys she walked and fished with--unnoticed sub-lieutenants, who had come home to get cured of one wound, and were going out again to the immediate chance of another, or worse; the tales of heroism and death of which the Scotch countryside was full.