en the boats return
from Shetland--if not, then I shall have something to say in the
matter. I shall want my dinner very soon, and some other thing we will
talk about. Let it go until there is a word to say or a movement to
make."

"I will be ready for thee at twelve o'clock." With a feeling of
content in her heart, Sunna went away. Had she not the Burns story to
tell? Yet she felt quite capable of restraining the incident until she
got to a point where its relation would serve her purpose or her
desire.

CHAPTER VI

THE OLD, OLD TROUBLE

From reef and rock and skerry, over headland, ness and roe,
The coastwise lights of England watch the ships of England go.

... a girl with sudden ebullitions,
Flashes of fun, and little bursts of song;
Petulant, pains, and fleeting pale contritions,
Mute little moods of misery and wrong.
Only a girl of Nature's rarest making,
Wistful and sweet--and with a heart for breaking.

The following two weeks were a time of anxiety concerning Boris. The
recruiting party with whom he had gone away had said positively they
must return with whatever luck they had in two weeks; and this
interval appeared to Sunna to be of interminable length. She spent a
good deal of the time with Thora affecting to console her for the loss
of Ian Macrae, who had left Kirkwall for Edinburgh a few days after
the departure of Boris.

"We are 'a couple of maidens all forlorn,'" she sang, and though Thora
disclaimed the situation, she could not prevent her companion
insisting on the fact.

Thora, however, did not feel that she had any reason for being
forlorn. Ian's love for her had been confessed, not only to herself,
but also to her father and mother, and the marriage agreed to with a
few reservations, whose wisdom the lovers fully acknowledged. She was
receiving the most ardent love letters by every mail and she had not
one doubt of her lover in any respect. Indeed, her happiness so
pervaded her whole person and conduct that Sunna felt it sometimes to
be both depressing and irritating.

Thora, however, was the sister of Boris, she could not quarrel with
her. She had great influence over Boris, and Sunna loved Boris--loved
him in spite of her anger and of his neglect. Very slowly went the two
weeks the enlisting ships had fixed as the length of their absence,
but the news of their great success made their earlier return most
likely, and after the tenth day every one was watc