"I don't know for what reason you want to let the place, Isla, or why anybody should wish to take it. But have it your own way. I dare say we could be very comfortable in Creagh unless, indeed, we have a wet summer. Then we would get very sick of it. I suppose the new folk would be willing to go out if we found it not possible to live up here."
"They would be perfectly reasonable, I'm sure, father," said Isla.
Her relief was so great that her features visibly relaxed, and her eyes began to shine. She was getting on famously. If only the latter part of the sad and sorry business should prove as easy to arrange as the first had been--why, then, perhaps she had been torturing herself needlessly. She had scarcely had a good night's rest since the arrival of the Indian mail, and the strain was beginning to tell on her.
"Well, I think I'll get you settled in Creagh comfortably with Diarmid as soon as possible. Then, after you are feeling quite at home, I think I shall go to Plymouth to meet Malcolm's boat. I haven't had a holiday for four years, father, and in the letter I had from Aunt Jean the other day she said they were all going up from Barras this week to Belgrave Square. So I'll take a few days of London dissipation before I meet Malcolm."
The old man made no demur. So great were his faith and his trust in Isla that he seldom questioned any of her doings.
During that week the bargain was concluded with the Rosmeads by Mr. Cattanach, after which a small correspondence began between Isla and Rosmead concerning certain minor repairs in the Castle that he wished to execute at his own expense.
A few days before they removed to Creagh he came down himself, ostensibly for the purpose of explaining to her that what he wished to effect was only a few small improvements with a view to making the home more comfortable for his mother.
Isla at first had resented the idea. Her Highland pride even got the length of tempting her to write and tell the man that he could either take the house as it was or leave it. But she could not afford to do that, so she relieved her feelings by writing the letter and then consigning it to the fire.
It was, however, a rather subdued and coldly aggressive Isla who met him on the occasion of his coming to pay his second call. But when she saw him, she was ashamed that she had written that letter and was glad that she had had the sense to burn it.
"I thought that I had better come instead of writing in reply to your last letter, Miss Mackinnon," he said presently. "We were getting adrift from the main issue. I want to explain that I don't propose to make any structural alterations on the house. The stove that I wrote about is an American invention for the heating of unsatisfactory country houses where, for some reason or other, the ordinary heating is difficult to arrange. It will greatly add to my mother's comfort while she is here, and it can be taken away when we leave. It will not harm the house but, on the contrary, will benefit it by drying it up. I think you mentioned to my sister that it was a little damp."