“And my papa has seen all those places?”

“Yes.  Don’t you think it strange he should have seen them all, and known he could live in any one of them, and then gone away back to Borva?”

“But what would the poor people have done if he had never gone back?”

“Oh, some one else would have taken his place.”

“And then, if he were living here or in London, he might have got tired, and he might have wished to go back to the Lewis and see all the people he knew; and then he would come among them like a stranger, and have no house to go to.”

Then Lavender said, quite gently, “Do you think, Sheila, you will ever tire of living in the South?”

The girl looked up quickly, and said, with a sort of surprised questioning in her eyes, “No, not with you.  But then we shall often go to the Lewis?”

“Oh yes,” her husband said, “as often as we can conveniently.  But it will take some time at first, you know, before you get to know all my friends who are to be your friends, and before you get properly fitted into our social circle.  That will take you a long time, Sheila, and you may have many annoyances or embarrassments to encounter; but you won’t be very much afraid, my girl?”

Sheila merely looked up to him:  there was no fear in the frank, brave eyes.

The first large town she saw struck a cold chill to her heart.  On a wet and dismal afternoon they sailed into Greenock.  A heavy smoke hung about the black building-yards and the dirty quays; the narrow and squalid streets were filled with mud, and only the poorer sections of the population waded through the mire or hung disconsolately about the corners of the thoroughfares.  A gloomier picture could not well be conceived; and Sheila, chilled with the long and wet sail and bewildered by the noise and bustle of the harbor, was driven to the hotel with a sore heart and a downcast face.

“This is not like London, Frank?” she said, pretty nearly ready to cry with disappointment.

“This?  No.  Well, it is like a part of London, certainly, but not the part you will live in.”

“But how can we live in the one place without passing the other and being made miserable by it?  There was no part of Oban like this.”

“Why, you will live miles away from the docks and quays of London.  You might live for a lifetime in London without ever knowing it had a harbor.  Don’t you be afraid, Sheila.  You will live in a district where there are far finer houses than any you saw in Oban, and far finer trees; and within a few minutes’ walk you will find great gardens and parks, with lakes in them and wild-fowl, and you will be able to teach the boys about how to set the helm and the sails when they are launching their small boats.”

“I should like that,” said Sheila, with her face brightening.

“Perhaps you would like a boat yourself?”

“Yes,” she said frankly.  “If there were not many people there, we might go out sometimes in the evening—­”