Shenac's Work at Home

by Margaret M. Robertson

“I might make the stock if I had tools; but the rest of it—no.”

The sheep were shorn. There were sixteen fleeces piled up in the barn; but a great deal must be done to it before it could be ready for the boys to wear. One thing Shenac had determined on. It should be sent and carded at the mill. The mill was twenty miles away, to be sure—perhaps more; but the time taken for the journey would be saved ten times over. Shenac thought she might possibly get through the spinning, but to card it by hand, with all there was to do in the fields, would be quite impossible.

This matter troubled Shenac all the more that she could not share her vexation with Hamish. The idea of selling the grandmother’s wheel seemed to him little short of sacrilege; and neither he nor their cousin Shenac could see why the mother could not dye and card and spin the wool, as she had been accustomed to do. But Shenac knew this to be impossible. Her mother was able for no such work now, though she might think so herself; and Shenac knew that to try and fail would make the mother miserable. What was to be done? Over this question she pondered with an earnestness, and, alas! with a uselessness, that gave impatience to her hand and sharpness to her voice at last.

“What aileth thee, Shenac Bhan, bonny Shenac, Shenac the farmer, Shenac the fair? Wherefore rests the shadow on thy brow, and the look of sadness in thine azure eyes?” Hamish had been reading to them Gaelic Ossian, and Shenac Dhu had caught up the manner of the poem, and spoke in a way that made them all laugh. Shenac Bhan laughed too; but not because she was merry, for her cousin’s nonsense always vexed her when she was “out of sorts.” But her cousin Christie was there, Mrs More, the eldest sister of Shenac Dhu; and so Shenac Bhan laughed with the rest. She was here on a visit from the city of M— where she lived, and had come over to see her aunt, as Angus Dhu’s children always called the widow. A heavy summer shower was falling, and all the boys had taken refuge from it in the house, and there were noise and confusion for a time.

“I want Christie to come into the barn and see our wool,” said Shenac Bhan at last, when the shower was over. “And, Shenac—dark Shenac, doleful Shenac—you are to stay and keep the lads in order till we come back.”

Shenac Dhu made a face, but let them go.

Mrs More was a pale, quiet woman, with a grave but kind manner, which put Shenac at her ease at once, though she had not seen her since her marriage, which was more than five years before. She had always been very kind to the children when she lived at home, and the memory of this gave Shenac courage to ask her help out of at least one of her difficulties.

“How much you have grown, Shenac!” said her cousin. “I hardly think I would have known you if I had seen you anywhere else. Yes, I think I would have known your face anywhere. But you are a woman now, and doing a woman’s work, they tell me.”

“We have all been busy this summer,” said Shenac; “but our hurry is over now for a while.”

Heedless of the little pools that were shining here and there, they went first into the garden, and then round the other buildings, and over to the spot, still black and charred, where the house had stood. But little was said by either of them.