ys
of his romance were over he would see the girl in another light.

Nay, as he continued to ask himself, had not the change already begun?
He grew less and less accustomed to see in Sheila a beautiful wild
sea-bird that had fluttered down for a time into a strange home in
the South. He had not quite forgotten or abandoned those imaginative
scenes in which the wonderful sea-princess was to enter crowded
drawing-rooms and have all the world standing back to regard her and
admire her and sing her praises. But now he was not so sure that that
would be the result of Sheila's entrance into society. As the date of
a certain dinner-party drew near he began to wish she was more like
the women he knew. He did not object to her strange sweet ways of
speech, nor to her odd likes and dislikes, nor even to an unhesitating
frankness that nearly approached rudeness sometimes in its scorn
of all compromise with the truth; but how would others regard these
things? He did not wish to gain the reputation of having married an
oddity.

"Sheila," he said on the morning of the day on which they were going
to this dinner-party, "you should not say _like-a-ness_. There are
only two syllables in _likeness_. It really does sound absurd to hear
you say _like-a-ness_."

She looked up to him with a quick trouble in her eyes. When had he
spoken to her so petulantly before? And then she cast down her eyes
again, and said submissively, "I will try not to speak like that. When
you go out I take a book and read aloud, and try to speak like you;
but I cannot learn all at once."

"_I_ don't mind," he said. "But you know other people must think it
so odd. I wonder why you should always say _gyarden_ for _garden_ now,
when it is just as easy to say _garden_?"

Once upon a time he had said there was no English like the English
spoken in Lewis, and had singled out this very word as typical of one
peculiarity in the pronunciation. But she did not remind him of that.
She only said in the same simple fashion, "If you will tell me my
faults I will try to correct them."

She turned away from him to get an envelope for a letter she had been
writing to her father. He fancied something was wrong, and perhaps
some touch of compunction smote him, for he went after her and took
her hand, and said, "Look here, Sheila. When I point out any trifles
like that, you must not call them faults, and fancy I have any serious
complaint to make. It is for your own good that