usband have one holiday?

"It is such a shame," she had said to him that morning as he left,
"that you will be going into that gloomy place, with its bare walls
and chairs, and the windows so that you cannot see out of them!"

"I must get some work done somehow, Sheila," he said, although he did
not tell her that he had not finished a picture since his marriage.

"I wish I could do some of it for you," she said.

"You! All the work you're good for is catching fish and feeding ducks
and planting things in gardens. Why don't you come down and feed the
ducks in the Serpentine?"

"I should like to do that," she answered. "I will go any day with
you."

"Well," he said, "you see, I don't know until I get along to the
studio whether I can get away for the fore-noon; and then if I were to
come back here, you would have little or no time to dress. Good-bye,
Sheila."

"Good-bye," she had said to him, giving up the Serpentine without much
regret.

But the forenoon had turned out so delightful that she thought she
would go along to the studio, and hale him out of that gaunt and dingy
apartment. She should take him away from town: therefore she might put
on that rough blue dress in which she used to go boating in Loch Roag.
She had lately smartened it up a bit with some white braid, and she
hoped he would approve.

Did the big hound know the dress? He rubbed his head against her
arm and hand when she came down, and looked up and whined almost
inaudibly.

"You are going out, Bras, and you must be a good dog and not try to
go after the deer. Then I will send a very good story of you to Mairi;
and when she comes to London after the harvest is over, she will bring
you a present from the Lewis, and you will be very proud."

She went out into the square, and was perhaps a little glad to get
away from it, as she was not sure of the blue dress and the small hat
with its sea-gull's feather being precisely the costume she ought to
wear. When she got into the Uxbridge road she breathed more freely,
and in the lightness of her heart she continued her conversation
with Bras, giving that attentive animal a vast amount of information,
partly in English, partly in Gaelic, which he answered only by a low
whine or a shake of his shaggy head.

But these confidences were suddenly interrupted. She had got down to
Addison Terrace, and was contentedly looking at the trees and chatting
to the dog, when by accident her eye happened to light