tiful in its way, but here she
was discussing as to the quality given to broth by the addition of a
certain vegetable which she offered to send down from her own garden
if the cottager in question would try to grow it.

"I wonder, Miss Mackenzie," he said at length, when they got outside,
his eyes dazed with the light and smarting with the peat-smoke--"I
wonder you can trouble yourself with such little matters that those
people should find out for themselves."

The girl looked up with some surprise: "That is the work I have to do.
My papa cannot do everything in the island."

"But what is the necessity for your bothering yourself about such
things? Surely they ought to be able to look after their own gardens
and houses. It is no degradation--certainly not, for anything you
interested yourself in would become worthy of attention by the very
fact--but, after all, it seems such a pity you should give up your
time to these commonplace details."

"But some one must do it," said the girl quite innocently, "and my
papa has no time. And they will be very good in doing what I ask
them--every one in the island."

Was this a willful affectation? he said to himself. Or was she really
incapable of understanding that there was anything incongruous in a
young lady of her position, education and refinement busying herself
with the curing of fish and the cost of lime? He had himself marked
the incongruity long ago, when Ingram had been telling him of the
remote and beautiful maiden whose only notions of the world had been
derived from literature--who was more familiar with the magic land
in which Endymion wandered than with any other--and that at the same
time she was about as good as her father at planning a wooden bridge
over a stream. When Lavender had got outside again--when he found
himself walking with her along the white beach in front of the blue
Atlantic--she was again the princess of his dreams. He looked at her
face, and he saw in her eyes that she must be familiar with all the
romantic nooks and glades of English poetry. The plashing of the waves
down there and the music of her voice recalled the sad legends of the
fishermen he hoped to hear her sing. But ever and anon there occurred
a jarring recollection--whether arising from a contradiction between
his notion of Sheila and the actual Sheila, or whether from some
incongruity in himself, he did not stop to consider. He only knew that
a beautiful maiden who had lived b