“Your honour knows our farm, where we have lived till now. Mr. Callum has given notice whenever he found my father ill, that we must quit it at his death. So we are going to quit.”
“And what else would you do? Your brothers are not old enough to manage a farm.”
“Mr. Callum is right, doubtless; and I have no desire to keep on what we could not keep up. As for where we are to go,—we should be quite easy in mind, if your honour would order the place down below to be made weather-tight for us, and fix a rent upon it. Your honour would not ask more than we could pay.”
“What, that half-ruined cottage in the bay, with the croft behind it! How could you live there? There is not a fence complete, and not an ear of barley has grown there these many years.”
“Your honour would have the fences mended at the same time with the cottage; and there is the fishing to depend on, as well as the ground, and the rocks shelve conveniently there for the weed, and Ronald could sell kelp when I sell fish; and Fergus could bring us in peat,—and as for Archie, the nearer the sea, the happier he is. So I hope your honour will let us try the place.”
“It is a wretched place, Ella. I think we might find something better for you. There are patches of richer soil in the vallies. Surely you had better settle in a more sheltered situation. The wind will blow away your soil and seed together before it has time to strike root.”
“We cannot get out of sight of the sea, on Archie’s account, sir.”
“He would never be happy between green hills,” added Fergus. “We should ever be missing him from home, and finding him in the old places: but if we settle on the beach, he will not be tempted to stray.”
“Though he could not stray very far, your honour, I am easier to have him under my eye, which might be, if I lived by fishing.”
“That is scarcely a woman’s business, Ella. It brings toil and hardship to the strongest men.”