The girl looked up with some surprise:  “That is the work I have to do.  My papa cannot do everything in the island.”

“But what is the necessity for your bothering yourself about such things?  Surely they ought to be able to look after their own gardens and houses.  It is no degradation—­certainly not, for anything you interested yourself in would become worthy of attention by the very fact—­but, after all, it seems such a pity you should give up your time to these commonplace details.”

“But some one must do it,” said the girl quite innocently, “and my papa has no time.  And they will be very good in doing what I ask them—­every one in the island.”

Was this a willful affectation? he said to himself.  Or was she really incapable of understanding that there was anything incongruous in a young lady of her position, education and refinement busying herself with the curing of fish and the cost of lime?  He had himself marked the incongruity long ago, when Ingram had been telling him of the remote and beautiful maiden whose only notions of the world had been derived from literature—­who was more familiar with the magic land in which Endymion wandered than with any other—­and that at the same time she was about as good as her father at planning a wooden bridge over a stream.  When Lavender had got outside again—­when he found himself walking with her along the white beach in front of the blue Atlantic—­she was again the princess of his dreams.  He looked at her face, and he saw in her eyes that she must be familiar with all the romantic nooks and glades of English poetry.  The plashing of the waves down there and the music of her voice recalled the sad legends of the fishermen he hoped to hear her sing.  But ever and anon there occurred a jarring recollection—­whether arising from a contradiction between his notion of Sheila and the actual Sheila, or whether from some incongruity in himself, he did not stop to consider.  He only knew that a beautiful maiden who had lived by the sea all her life, and who had followed the wanderings of Endymion in the enchanted forest, need not have been so particular about a method of boiling potatoes, or have shown so much interest in a pattern for children’s frocks.

Mackenzie and Ingram met them.  There was the usual “Well, Sheila?” followed by a thousand questions about the very things she had been inquiring into.  That was one of the odd points about Ingram that puzzled and sometimes vexed Lavender; for if you are walking home at night it is inconvenient to be accompanied by a friend who would stop to ask about the circumstances of some old crone hobbling along the pavement, or who could, on his own doorstep, stop to have a chat with a garrulous policeman.  Ingram was about as odd as Sheila herself in the attention he paid to those wretched cotters and their doings.  He could not advise on the important subject of broth, but he would have tasted it by way of discovery, even