em declared they never read in a train. He got them
some eau-de-cologne, though they had plenty in their traveling-case.
He purchased for them an amount of miscellaneous literature that would
have been of benefit to a hospital, provided the patients were strong
enough to bear it. And then he bade them good-bye at least half a
dozen times as the train was slowly moving out of the station, and
made the most solemn vows about meeting them at Bregenz.

"Now, Sheila," he said, "shall we go to the theatre?"

"I do not care to go unless you wish," was the answer.

"She does not care to go anywhere now," her father said; and then the
girl, seeing that he was rather distressed about her apparent want of
interest, pulled herself together and said cheerfully, "Is it not too
late to go to a theatre? And I am sure we could be very comfortable
at home. Mairi, she will think it unkind if we go to the theatre by
ourselves."

"Mairi!" said her father impatiently, for he never lost an opportunity
of indirectly justifying Lavender. Mairi has more sense than you,
Sheila, and she knows that a servant-lass has to stay at home, and she
knows that she is ferry different from you; and she is a ferry good
girl whatever, and hass no pride, and she does not expect nonsense in
going about and such things."

"I am quite sure, papa, you would rather go home and sit down and have
a talk with Mr. Ingram, and a pipe and a little whisky, than go to any
theatre."

"What I would do! And what I would like!" said her father in a vexed
way. "Sheila, you have no more sense as a lass that wass still at the
school. I want you to go to the theatre and amuse yourself, instead
of sitting in the house and thinking, thinking, thinking. And all for
what?"

"But if one has something to be sorry for, is it not better to think
of it?"

"And what hef you to be sorry for?" said her father in amazement, and
forgetting that, in his diplomatic fashion, he had been accustoming
Sheila to the notion that she too might have erred grievously and been
in part responsible for all that had occurred.

"I have a great deal to be sorry for, papa," she said; and then she
renewed her entreaties that her two companions should abandon their
notion of going to a theatre, and resolve to spend the rest of the
evening in what she consented to call her home.

After all, they found a comfortable little company when they sat round
the fire, which had been lit for cheerfulness rather t