nd bare-armed, but she was otherwise smartly dressed, and she held
in her hand an enormous flounder, apparently about half as heavy as
herself.

"Will ye hef the fesh, Miss Sheila?" said the small Ailasa, holding
out the flounder, but looking down all the same.

"Did you catch it yourself, Ailasa?"

"Yes, it wass Donald and me: we wass out in a boat, and Donald had a
line."

"And it is a present for me?" said Sheila, patting the small head and
its wild and soft hair. "Thank you, Ailasa. But you must ask Donald to
carry it up to the house and give it to Mairi. I cannot take it with
me just now, you know."

There was a small boy cowering behind one of the upturned boats, and
by his furtive peepings showing that he was in league with his sister.
Ailasa, not thinking that she was discovering his whereabouts, turned
quite naturally in that direction, until she was suddenly stopped by
Lavender, who called to her and put his hand in his pocket. But he was
too late. Sheila had stepped in, and with a quick look, which was all
the protest that was needed, shut her hand over the half crown he had
in his fingers.

"Never mind, Ailasa," she said. "Go away and get Donald, and bid him
carry the fish up to Mairi."

Lavender put up the half crown in his pocket in a somewhat dazed
fashion: what he chiefly knew was that Sheila had for a moment held
his hand in hers and that her eyes had met his.

Well, that little incident of Ailasa and the flounder was rather
pleasant to him. It did not shock the romantic associations he had
begun to weave around his fair companion. But when they had gone up
to the cottages--Mackenzie and Ingram not yet having arrived--and
when Sheila proceeded to tell him about the circumstances of the
fishermen's lives, and to explain how such and such things were done
in the fields and in the pickling-houses, and so forth, Lavender was
a little disappointed. Sheila took him into some of the cottages, or
rather hovels, and he vaguely knew in the darkness that she sat down
by the low glow of the peat-fire, and began to ask the women about all
sorts of improvements in the walls and windows and gardens, and what
not. Surely it was not for a princess to go advising people about
particular sorts of soap, or offering to pay for a pane of glass if
the husband of the woman would make the necessary aperture in the
stone wall. The picture of Sheila appearing as a sea-princess in a
London drawing-room was all very beau