with Sheila; and she was rapidly forming very good opinions of the English race and their ways and their looks.  But when Lavender took away Sheila from Borva a change came over Mairi’s sentiments.  She gradually fell in with the current opinions of the island—­that it was a great pity Sheila had not married young Mr. Maclntyre of Sutherland, or some one who would have allowed her to remain among her own people.  Mairi began to think that the English, though they were handsome and good-natured and free with their money, were on the whole a selfish race, inconsiderate and forgetful of promises.  She began to dislike the English, and wished they would stay in their own country, and not interfere with other people.

“I hope he is very well,” said Mairi dutifully:  she could at least say that honestly.

“You will see him at two o’clock.  He is coming in to luncheon; and he does not know you are here, and you are to be a great surprise to him, Mairi.  And there is to be a greater surprise still; for we are going to make one of the rooms into the drawing-room at home; and you must open your boxes, and bring me down the heather and the peat, Mairi, and the two bottles; and then, you know, when the salmon is on the table, and the whisky and the beer, and Bras lying on the hearth-rug, and the peat-smoke all through the room, then you will come in and shake hands with him, and he will think he is in Borva again.”

Mairi was a little puzzled.  She did not understand the intention of this strange thing.  But she went and fetched the materials she had brought with her from Lewis, and Sheila and she set to work.

It was a pleasant enough occupation for this bright forenoon, and Sheila, as she heard Mairi’s sweet Highland speech, and as she brought from all parts of the house the curiosities sent her from the Hebrides, would almost have fancied she was superintending a “cleaning” of that museum-like little drawing-room at Borva.  Skins of foxes, seals and deer, stuffed eagles and strange fishes, masses of coral and wonderful carvings in wood brought from abroad, shells of every size from every clime,—­all these were brought together into Frank Lavender’s smoking-room.  The ordinary ornaments of the mantelpiece gave way to fanciful arrangements of peacocks’ feathers.  Fresh-blown ling and the beautiful spikes of the bell-heather formed the staple of the decorations, and Mairi had brought enough to adorn an assembly-room.

“That is like the Lewis people,” Sheila said with a laugh:  she had not been in as happy a mood for many a day.  “I asked you to bring one peat, and of course you brought two.  Tell the truth, Mairi:  could you have forced yourself to bring one peat?”

“I wass thinking it was safer to bring sa two,” replied Mairi, blushing all over the fair and pretty face.