“Of course I did not laugh at you,” he said, taking both her hands in his, “although I used to sometimes when you were a little girl and talked very wild English. Don’t you remember how vexed you used to be, and how pleased you were when your papa turned the laugh against me by getting me to say that awful Gaelic sentence about ‘A young calf ate a raw egg!’ ”
“Can you say it now?” said Sheila, with her face getting bright and pleased again. “Try it after me. Now listen.”
She uttered some half dozen of the most extraordinary sounds that any language ever contained, but Ingram would not attempt to follow her. She reproached him with having forgotten all that he had learnt in Lewis, and said she should no longer look on him as a possible Highlander.
“But what are you now?” he asked. “You are no longer that wild girl who used to run out to sea in the Maighdean-mhara whenever there was the excitement of a storm coming on.”
“Many times,” she said, slowly and wistfully, “I will wish that I could be that again for a little while.”
“Don’t you enjoy, then, all those fine gatherings you go to?”
“I try to like them.”
“And you don’t succeed?”
He was looking at her gravely and earnestly, and she turned away her head and did not answer. At this moment Lavender came down stairs and entered the room.
“Halloo, Ingram, my boy! glad to see you! What pretty flowers! It’s a pity we can’t take them to Brighton with us.”