When they got to Borva, Lavender began to see that Mackenzie had laid the most subtle plans for reconciling him to the hard weather of these northern winters; and the young man, nothing loath, fell into his ways, and was astonished at the amusement and interest that could be got out of a residence in this bleak island at such a season.  Mackenzie discarded at once the feeble protections against cold and wet which his guest had brought with him.  He gave him a pair of his own knickerbockers and enormous boots; he made him wear a frieze coat borrowed from Duncan; he insisted on his turning down the flap of a sealskin cap and tying the ends under his chin; and thus equipped they started on many a rare expedition round the coast.  But on their first going out, Mackenzie, looking at him, said with some chagrin, “Will they wear gloves when they go shooting in your country?”

“Oh,” said Lavender, “these are only a pair of old dogskins I use chiefly to keep my hands clean.  You see I have cut out the trigger-finger.  And they keep your hands from being numbed, you know, with the cold or the rain.”

“There will be not much need of that after a little while,” said Mackenzie; and indeed, after half an hour’s tramping over snow and climbing over rocks, Lavender was well inclined to please the old man by tossing the gloves into the sea, for his hands were burning with heat.

Then the pleasant evenings after all the fatigues of the day were over, clothes changed, dinner despatched, and Sheila at the open piano in that warm little drawing-room, with its strange shells and fish and birds!

  Love in thine eyes for ever plays;
  He in thy snowy bosom strays,

they sang, just as in the bygone times of summer; and now old Mackenzie had got on a bit farther in his musical studies, and could hum with the best of them,

  He makes thy rosy lips his care,
  And walks the mazes of thy hair.

There was no winter at all in the snug little room, with its crimson fire and closed shutters and songs of happier times.  “When the rosy morn appearing” had nothing inappropriate in it; and if they particularly studied the words of “Oh wert thou in the cauld blast,” it was only that Sheila might teach her companion the Scotch pronunciation, as far as she knew it.  And once, half in joke, Lavender said he could believe it was summer again if Sheila had only on her slate-gray silk dress, with the red ribbon round her neck; and sure enough, after dinner she came down in that dress, and Lavender took her hand and kissed it in gratitude.  Just at that moment, too, Mackenzie began to swear at Duncan for not having brought him his pipe, and not only went out of the room to look for it, but was a full half hour in finding it.  When he came in again he was singing carelessly,

  Love in thine eyes for ever plays,

just as if he had got his pipe round the corner.