“Oh, it is ever so much prettier,” said young Lavender with a quite genuine enthusiasm in his face, not altogether begotten of the letter y; “and indeed I don’t think you can possibly tell how singularly pleasant and quaint it is to an English ear to hear just that little softening of the vowels that the people have here.  I suppose you don’t notice that they say gyarden for garden—­”

“They!” As if he had paid attention to the pronunciation of any one except Sheila herself!

“—­but not quite so hard as I pronounce it.  And so with a great many other words, that are softened and sweetened, and made almost poetical in their sound by the least bit of inflection.  How surprised and pleased English ladies would be to hear you speak!  Oh, I beg your pardon—­I did not mean to—­I—­I beg your pardon—­”

Sheila seemed a little astonished by her companion’s evident mortification, and said with a smile, “If others speak so in the island, of course I must too; and you say it does not shock you.”

His distress at his own rudeness now found an easy vent.  He protested that no people could talk English like the people of Lewis.  He gave Sheila to understand that the speech of English folks was as the croaking of ravens compared with the sweet tones of the northern isles; and this drew him on to speak of his friends in the South and of London, and of the chances of Sheila ever going thither.

“It must be so strange never to have seen London,” he said.  “Don’t you ever dream of what it is like?  Don’t you ever try to think of a great space, nearly as big as this island, all covered over with large houses, the roads between the houses all made of stone, and great bridges going over the rivers, with railway-trains standing?  By the way, you have never seen a railway-engine!”

He looked at her for a moment in astonishment, as if he had not hitherto realized to himself the absolute ignorance of the remote princess.  Sheila, with some little touch of humor appearing in her calm eyes, said, “But I am not quite ignorant of all these things.  I have seen pictures of them, and my papa has described them to me so often that I will feel as if I had seen them all; and I do not think I should be surprised, except, perhaps, by the noise of the big towns.  It was many a time my papa told me of that; but he says I cannot understand it, nor the great distance of land you travel over to get to London.  That is what I do not wish to see.  I was often thinking of it, and that to pass so many places that you do not know would make you very sad.”

“That can be easily avoided,” he said lightly.  “When you go to London, you must go from Glasgow or Edinburgh in a night-train, and fall fast asleep, and in the morning you will find yourself in London, without having seen anything.”

“Just as if one had gone across a great distance of sea, and come to another island you will never see before,” said Sheila, with the gray-blue eyes under the black eyelashes grown strange and distant.