She was a pretty little thing, with a round fair face tanned by the sun, brown hair and soft dark eyes.  She was bare-headed, bare-footed and bare-armed, but she was otherwise smartly dressed, and she held in her hand an enormous flounder, apparently about half as heavy as herself.

“Will ye hef the fesh, Miss Sheila?” said the small Ailasa, holding out the flounder, but looking down all the same.

“Did you catch it yourself, Ailasa?”

“Yes, it wass Donald and me:  we wass out in a boat, and Donald had a line.”

“And it is a present for me?” said Sheila, patting the small head and its wild and soft hair.  “Thank you, Ailasa.  But you must ask Donald to carry it up to the house and give it to Mairi.  I cannot take it with me just now, you know.”

There was a small boy cowering behind one of the upturned boats, and by his furtive peepings showing that he was in league with his sister.  Ailasa, not thinking that she was discovering his whereabouts, turned quite naturally in that direction, until she was suddenly stopped by Lavender, who called to her and put his hand in his pocket.  But he was too late.  Sheila had stepped in, and with a quick look, which was all the protest that was needed, shut her hand over the half crown he had in his fingers.

“Never mind, Ailasa,” she said.  “Go away and get Donald, and bid him carry the fish up to Mairi.”

Lavender put up the half crown in his pocket in a somewhat dazed fashion:  what he chiefly knew was that Sheila had for a moment held his hand in hers and that her eyes had met his.

Well, that little incident of Ailasa and the flounder was rather pleasant to him.  It did not shock the romantic associations he had begun to weave around his fair companion.  But when they had gone up to the cottages—­Mackenzie and Ingram not yet having arrived—­and when Sheila proceeded to tell him about the circumstances of the fishermen’s lives, and to explain how such and such things were done in the fields and in the pickling-houses, and so forth, Lavender was a little disappointed.  Sheila took him into some of the cottages, or rather hovels, and he vaguely knew in the darkness that she sat down by the low glow of the peat-fire, and began to ask the women about all sorts of improvements in the walls and windows and gardens, and what not.  Surely it was not for a princess to go advising people about particular sorts of soap, or offering to pay for a pane of glass if the husband of the woman would make the necessary aperture in the stone wall.  The picture of Sheila appearing as a sea-princess in a London drawing-room was all very beautiful 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.”