ESS OF THULE.

By William Black, Author of "THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PHAETON."

CHAPTER X.

FAIRY--LAND.

"Welcome to London--!"

He was about to add "Sheila," but suddenly stopped. The girl, who had
hastily come forward to meet him with a glad look in her eyes and with
both hands outstretched, doubtless perceived the brief embarrassment
of the moment, and was perhaps a little amused by it. But she took no
notice of it: she merely advanced to him and caught both his hands,
and said, "And are you very well?"

It was the old and familiar salutation, uttered in the same odd,
gentle, insinuating fashion, and in the same low and sweet voice.
Sheila's stay in Oban and the few days she had already spent in London
had not taught her the difference between "very" and "ferry."

"It is so strange to hear you speak in London--Mrs. Lavender," he
said, with rather a wry face as he pronounced her full and proper
title.

And now it was Sheila's turn to look a bit embarrassed and color,
and appear uncertain whether to be vexed or pleased, when her husband
himself broke in in his usual impetuous fashion: "I say, Ingram, don't
be a fool! Of course you must call her Sheila--unless when there are
people here, and then you must please yourself. Why, the poor girl has
enough of strange things and names about her already. I don't know how
she keeps her head. It would bewilder me, I know; but I can see that,
after she has stood at the window for a time, and begun to get dazed
by all the wonderful sights and sounds outside, she suddenly withdraws
and fixes all her attention on some little domestic duty, just as if
she were hanging on to the practical things of life to assure herself
it isn't all a dream. Isn't that so, Sheila?" he said, putting his
hand on her shoulder.

"You ought not to watch me like that," she said with a smile. "But it
is the noise that is most bewildering. There are many places I will
know already when I see them, many places and things I have known in
pictures; but now the size of them, and the noise of carriages, and
the people always passing, and always different, always strangers,
so that you never see the same people any more--But I am getting very
much accustomed to it."

"You are trying very hard to get accustomed to it, any way, my good
girl," said her husband.

"You need not be in a hurry: you may begin to regret some day that you
have not a little of that feeling of wonder left," said Ingram. "