“Yes! Thou art right. Now then, let this affair lie still in thy heart. I think that he will come to see thee when the boats return from Shetland––if not, then I shall have something to say in the matter. I shall want my dinner very soon, and some other thing we will talk about. Let it go until there is a word to say or a movement to make.”

“I will be ready for thee at twelve o’clock.” With a feeling of content in her heart, Sunna went away. Had she not the Burns story to tell? Yet she felt quite capable of restraining the incident until she got to a point where its relation would serve her purpose or her desire.


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CHAPTER VI

THE OLD, OLD TROUBLE

From reef and rock and skerry, over headland, ness and roe,
The coastwise lights of England watch the ships of England go.
... a girl with sudden ebullitions,
Flashes of fun, and little bursts of song;
Petulant, pains, and fleeting pale contritions,
Mute little moods of misery and wrong.
Only a girl of Nature’s rarest making,
Wistful and sweet––and with a heart for breaking.

The following two weeks were a time of anxiety concerning Boris. The recruiting party with whom he had gone away had said positively they must return with whatever luck they had in two weeks; and this interval appeared to Sunna to be of interminable length. She spent a good deal of the time with Thora affecting to console her for the loss of Ian Macrae, who had left Kirkwall for Edinburgh a few days after the departure of Boris.

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