atheson's!" exclaimed Shenac Bhan.

"No; a decided improvement upon that," said Mr Rugg, preparing to put
on the rim and the head. The band was ready, too; and he turned the
wheel and pulled out an imaginary thread with such gravity that all
laughed. "Well, what do you think of it, girls?" he asked after a
little time. "Will you have it, Miss Shenac?"

"I should like to borrow it for a month," said Shenac with a sigh.

"It a'n't to be lent nor to be borrowed," said the peddler; "leastways,
it a'n't for me to lend. The owner may do as she likes."

"How much would it cost?" asked Shenac with a vague, wild idea that
possibly at some future time she might get one.

"I can tell you that exactly," said the peddler. "I've got the invoice
here all right, and another document with it;" and he handed Shenac a
letter, directed, as she knew at a glance, in the handwriting of her
cousin, Mrs More.

"It's from Christie," said Shenac Dhu, looking over her shoulder. "Open
it, Shenac; what ails you?"

Shenac opened the letter, and the other Shenac read it with her. It
need not be given here. It told how Mrs More had taken Shenac's hair
to a hair-dresser in the city, and how the money she had received for it
had been given into the hands of Mr Rugg, who was to buy a wheel with
it, as something Shenac would be sure to value.

"And here it is," said Mr Rugg; "as good a wheel as need be.--It will
put yours quite out of fashion, Mrs Macivor."

It was with some difficulty that the mother could be made to understand
that the wheel was Shenac's--bought and paid for. As for Shenac, she
could only stand and look at it, saying not a word. Shenac Dhu shook
her heartily.

"Here I have come all the way in the rain to hear what you would say,
and you stand and glower and say nothing at all."

"Try it, Shenac," said Hamish, bringing a handful of rolls of wool from
his mother's wheel.

"She'll need to learn first," said Shenac Dhu.

But Shenac had tried Mary Matheson's wheel more than once; and besides,
as Mr Rugg had often said, and now triumphantly repeated, she had a
"faculty." There really did seem nothing that she could not learn to do
more easily than other people. Now the long thread was drawn out even
and fine as any that ever passed through the mother's hands on the
precious little wheel. The mother examined and approved, Shenac Dhu
exclaimed, and the little lads laughed and clapped their hands. As for
Shenac Bhan,