"Hilloa, ma colleen dhas! run back to the tower, will you, and tell Nora to fetch me down a basket, and you shall have a good handful of fish for your pains, for I have caught enough to garrison the island for a week."
Guessing his mistake and enchanted at the success of her masquerade, Nellie instantly darted into the kitchen, seized a fishing-creel which was lying near the hearth, and rushed down to the pier. Roger was still so busy disentangling the fish from the net in which he had caught them, that he never even looked at Nellie until he turned round to place them in her basket. Then for the first time he saw who it was whom he had been so unceremoniously ordering about upon his commission. Had Nellie been rich and prosperous, he would probably have laughed and made exceedingly light of the matter; but poor, and almost dependent on his bounty as she was, he flushed scarlet to the forehead, and apologized with an eager deference, which was not only very touching in itself, but very characteristic of the sensitive and generous-hearted race from which he sprung. "But, after all," he added, in conclusion, smiling and laying his finger lightly on the folds of Nellie's mantle, "after all, how could I dream that, her weeks of weary wandering only just concluded, Mistress Netterville would have been up again with the sun, looking as fresh and bright as the morning dew, and masquerading like a peasant girl?"
"But I am not masquerading at all," said Nellie, laughing, and yet evidently quite in earnest. "I am as poor as a peasant girl, and mean to dress like one, ay, and to work like one too, so long as I needs must be dependent upon others."
"Not if I am still to be master here," said Roger, very decidedly, taking the fishing-creel out of her hands. "Like a wandering princess you have come to me; and like a wandering princess I intend that you shall be treated, so long as you condescend to honor me by your presence in this kingdom of barren rocks."
"But the fish," said the laughing and blushing Nellie; "in the meantime, what is to be done with the fish? Nora will be in pain about it; for she told me last night that there wasn't a blessed fish in the bay that would be worth a 'thraneen' if only half-an-hour were suffered to elapse between their exit from the ocean and their introduction to her kitchen."
"Nora is quite right," said Roger, responding freely to the young girl's merry laugh; "and it has cost me both time and pains, I do assure you, to impress that fact upon her mind. But Maida has already told her all about it; and here she comes," he added, as he caught a glimpse of the old woman descending leisurely toward the pier. "So now we may leave the fish with a safe conscience to her tender mercies, and, if you are inclined for a stroll, I will take you up to yonder rocky platform, from whence you will see the Atlantic, as unfortunately we but seldom see it on this wild coast, in all the calm glories of a summer day."
To Be Continued.