“Oh yes, she’s at home. Go into the house. I daresay her mother will spare her.” And he repeated a Gaelic proverb, which being translated into English would mean something like, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” Shenac smiled to herself as she thought of her mother’s many messages and her dreaded mission to John Firinn. It did not seem much like play to her.
But burdens have a way of slipping easily from young shoulders, and the two Shenacs went on their way cheerily enough, and I daresay a stranger meeting them might have fancied that our Shenac was the lighter-hearted of the two. The cloud fell again, however, when they came to the turn of the road that took them to Mary Matheson’s.
“I have to go down to the McDonalds’, Shenac. Just go on, and I will follow you in two or three minutes.”
“To the McDonalds’!” repeated Shenac Dhu. “Not to John Firinn’s surely? What in all the world can you have to do with him? You had better take me with you, Shenac. They say John has a trick of forgetting things sometimes. You might need me for a witness.”
Shenac Bhan laughed and shook her head.
“There’s no need. Go on to Mary’s, and tell her I am coming. I shall not be long.”
She wished heartily that Hamish had been with her, or that she could have honestly said her mother had sent her; for it seemed to her that she was taking too much upon her to be trying to make a bargain with a man like John Firinn. There was no help for it now, however, and she knocked at the door, and then lifted the latch and went in with all the courage she could summon.
She did not need her courage for a little time, however; but her tact and skill in various matters—her “faculty,” as Mr Rugg called it—stood her in good stead for the next half-hour.
Seated on a low chair, looking ill and harassed, was poor Mrs McDonald, with a little wailing baby on her knee, and her other little ones clustering round her, while her husband, the formidable John himself, was doing his best to prepare dinner for all of them. It was long past dinner-time, and it promised to be longer still before these little hungry mouths would be stopped by the food their father was attempting to prepare. For he was unaccustomed and inexpert, and it must have added greatly to the sufferings of his wife to see his blundering movements, undoing with one hand what he did with the other, and using his great strength where only a little skill was needed. Shenac hesitated a moment, and then advanced to Mrs McDonald.
“Are you no better? Can I do anything for you?—Let me do that,” she added hastily, as she saw the success of the dinner put in jeopardy by an awkward movement of the incompetent cook. In another moment Shenac’s black dress was pinned up, and soon the dinner was on the table, and the father and children were seated at it. To her husband’s entreaty that she would try and eat something, the poor woman did not yield. She was flushed and feverish, and evidently in great pain.