her judgment.

"Angus Dhu can get all the help he needs to make the hay when it fairs,"
said she. "But if we have too much down we shall not be able to manage
it right, I'm afraid."

"There's no fear of having too much down. I must keep at it. Where
there's only one man to cut, he must keep at it," said Dan gravely. "If
you and the rest of the children are busy when the sun shines, you will
soon overtake me."

"Only one man!" "You and the rest of the children!" Vexed as Shenac
was, she could not help being amused, and fortunately a good deal of her
vexation passed away in the laugh, in which Dan heartily joined.

This week of rain was a trying time to Shenac. Nothing could be done
out of doors, for the rain was constant and heavy. If she could have
had the wheel to herself, she would have got on with the spinning, and
that would have been something, she thought. Her mother was spinning,
however; and though she could not sit at the wheel all day, she did not
like to have her work interfered with, and Shenac could not make use of
the time when her mother was not employed, and very little was
accomplished. There was mending to be done, which her mother could have
done so much better than she could, Shenac thought. But her mother sat
at the wheel, and Shenac wearied herself over the shirts and trousers of
her brothers, and at last startled herself and every one else by
speaking sharply to little Flora and shaking Colin well for bringing in
mud on their feet when they came home from school.

After that she devoted her surplus energies to the matter of
house-cleaning, and that did better. Everything in the house, both
upstairs and down, and everything in the dairy, passed through her
hands. Things that could be scrubbed were scrubbed, and things that
could be polished were polished. The roof and the walls were
whitewashed, and great maple-branches hung here and there upon them,
that the flies might not soil their whiteness; and then Shenac solemnly
declared to Hamish that it was time the rain should cease.

Hamish laughed. The week had passed far less uncomfortably to him than
to his sister. He had made up his mind to the necessity of staying
within-doors during such weather; and he could do so all the more easily
as, with a good conscience, he could give himself up to the enjoyment of
a book that had fallen into his hands. It was not a new book. Two or
three of the first pages were gone, but it was a