"Oh, if I could get one for myself!" said Shenac. She had seen and used
Mary Matheson's last summer, and now, hurried as she was at home, she
took an afternoon to go with Hamish to see it again.

"Could you not make one, Hamish?" she said entreatingly; "you can do so
many things."

But Hamish shook his head.

"I might make the stock if I had tools; but the rest of it--no."

The sheep were shorn. There were sixteen fleeces piled up in the barn;
but a great deal must be done to it before it could be ready for the
boys to wear. One thing Shenac had determined on. It should be sent
and carded at the mill. The mill was twenty miles away, to be sure--
perhaps more; but the time taken for the journey would be saved ten
times over. Shenac thought she might possibly get through the spinning,
but to card it by hand, with all there was to do in the fields, would be
quite impossible.

This matter troubled Shenac all the more that she could not share her
vexation with Hamish. The idea of selling the grandmother's wheel
seemed to him little short of sacrilege; and neither he nor their cousin
Shenac could see why the mother could not dye and card and spin the
wool, as she had been accustomed to do. But Shenac knew this to be
impossible. Her mother was able for no such work now, though she might
think so herself; and Shenac knew that to try and fail would make the
mother miserable. What was to be done? Over this question she pondered
with an earnestness, and, alas! with a uselessness, that gave impatience
to her hand and sharpness to her voice at last.

"What aileth thee, Shenac Bhan, bonny Shenac, Shenac the farmer, Shenac
the fair? Wherefore rests the shadow on thy brow, and the look of
sadness in thine azure eyes?" Hamish had been reading to them Gaelic
Ossian, and Shenac Dhu had caught up the manner of the poem, and spoke
in a way that made them all laugh. Shenac Bhan laughed too; but not
because she was merry, for her cousin's nonsense always vexed her when
she was "out of sorts." But her cousin Christie was there, Mrs More,
the eldest sister of Shenac Dhu; and so Shenac Bhan laughed with the
rest. She was here on a visit from the city of M--- where she lived,
and had come over to see her aunt, as Angus Dhu's children always called
the widow. A heavy summer shower was falling, and all the boys had
taken refuge from it in the house, and there were noise and confusion
for a time.

"I want Christie to come