r
impatience or remonstrance was visible on his face when he went to
the blurred windows, day after day, to see only the same desolate
picture--the dark sea, the wet rocks, the gray mists over the moorland
and the shining of the red gravel before the house. He would stand
with his hands in his pocket and whistle "Love in thine eyes for ever
plays," just as if he were looking out on a cheerful summer sunrise.
When he and Sheila went to the door, and were received by a cold blast
of wet wind and a driving shower of rain, he would slam the door to
again with a laugh, and pull the girl back into the house. Sometimes
she would not be controlled; and then he would accompany her about the
garden as she attended to her duties, or would go down to the shore
with her to give Bras a run. From these excursions he returned in
the best of spirits, with a fine color in his face; until, having got
accustomed to heavy boots, impervious frieze and the discomfort of
wet hands, he grew to be about as indifferent to the rain as Sheila
herself, and went fishing or shooting or boating with much content,
whether it was wet or dry.

"It has been the happiest month of my life--I know that," he said to
Mackenzie as they stood together on the quay at Stornoway.

"And I hope you will hef many like it in the Lewis," said the old man
cheerfully.

"I think I should soon learn to become a Highlander up here," said
Lavender, "if Sheila would only teach me the Gaelic."

"The Gaelic!" cried Mackenzie impatiently. "The Gaelic! It is none of
the gentlemen who will come here in the autumn will want the Gaelic;
and what for would you want the Gaelic--ay, if you was staying here
the whole year round?"

"But Sheila will teach me all the same--won't you, Sheila?" he said,
turning to his companion, who was gazing somewhat blankly at the rough
steamer and at the rough gray sea beyond the harbor.

"Yes," said the girl: she seemed in no mood for joking.

Lavender returned to town more in love than ever; and soon the news
of his engagement was spread abroad, he nothing loath. Most of his
club-friends laughed, and prophesied it would come to nothing. How
could a man in Lavender's position marry anybody but an heiress? He
could not afford to go and marry a fisherman's daughter. Others came
to the conclusion that artists and writers and all that sort of people
were incomprehensible, and said "Poor beggar!" when they thought of
the fashion in which Lavender had