“And I am sure you hef not done that, Miss Sheila,” Duncan said, “for there wass no one knew Loch Roag better as you, not one, and you hef not been so long away; and when you tek the tiller in your hand, it will all come back to you, just as if you wass going away from Borva the day before yesterday.”
She certainly had not forgotten, and she was proud and pleased to see how well the shapely little craft performed its duties. They had a favorable wind, and ran rapidly along the opening channels until, in due course, they glided into the well-known bay over which, and shining in the yellow light from the sunset, they saw Sheila’s home.
Sheila had escaped so far the trouble of meeting friends, but she could not escape her friends in Borvapost. They had waited for her for hours, not knowing when the Clansman might arrive at Stornoway; and now they crowded down to the shore, and there was a great shaking of hands, and an occasional sob from some old crone, and a thousand repetitions of the familiar “And are you ferry well, Miss Sheila?” from small children who had come across from the village in defiance of mothers and fathers. And Sheila’s face brightened into a wonderful gladness, and she had a hundred questions to ask for one answer she got, and she did not know what to do with the number of small brown fists that wanted to shake hands with her.
“Will you let Miss Sheila alone?” Duncan called out, adding something in Gaelic which came strangely from a man who sometimes reproved his own master for swearing. “Get away with you, you brats; it wass better you would be in your beds than bothering people that wass come all the way from Stornoway.”
Then they all went up in a body to the house, and Scarlett, who had neither eyes, ears nor hands, but for the young girl who had been the very pride of her heart, was nigh driven to distraction by Mackenzie’s stormy demands for oatcake and glasses and whisky. Scarlett angrily remonstrated with her husband for allowing this rabble of people to interfere with the comfort of Miss Sheila; and Duncan, taking her reproaches with great good-humor, contented himself with doing her work, and went and got the cheese and the plates and the whisky, while Scarlett, with a hundred endearing phrases, was helping Sheila to take off her traveling things. And Sheila, it turned out, had brought with her, in her portmanteau, certain huge and wonderful cakes, not of oatmeal, from Glasgow; and these were soon on the great table in the kitchen, and Sheila herself distributing pieces to those small folks who were so awe-stricken by the sight of this strange dainty that they forgot their injunctions and thanked her timidly in Gaelic.
“Well, Sheila, my lass,” said her father to her, as they stood at the door of the house and watched the troop of their friends, children and all, go over the hill to Borvapost in the red light of the sunset, “and are you glad to be home again?”
“Oh, yes,” she said, heartily enough, and Mackenzie thought that things were going on favorably.
“You hef no such sunsets in the South, Sheila,” he observed, loftily casting his eyes around, although he did not usually pay much attention to the picturesqueness of his native island. “Now look at the light on Suainabhal. Do you see the red on the water down there, Sheila? Oh, yes; I thought you would say it wass ferry beautiful—it is a ferry good color on the water. The water looks ferry well when it is red. You hef no such things in London—not any, Sheila. Now, we must go in-doors, for these things you can see any day here, and we must not keep our friends waiting.”
An ordinary, dull-witted or careless man might have been glad to have a little quiet after so long and tedious a journey, but Mr. Mackenzie was no such person. He had resolved to guard against Sheila’s first evening at home being in any way languid or monotonous, and so he had asked one or two of his especial friends to remain and have supper with them. Moreover, he did not wish the girl to spend the rest of the evening out of doors when the melancholy time of the twilight drew over the hills, and the sea began to sound remote and sad. Sheila should have a comfortable evening in-doors; and he would himself, after supper, when the small parlor was well lit up, sing for her one or two songs, just to keep the thing going, as it were. He would let nobody else sing. These Gaelic songs were not the sort of music to make people cheerful. And if Sheila herself would sing for them?
And Sheila did. And her father chose the songs for her, and they were the blithest he could find, and the girl seemed really in excellent spirits. They had their pipes and hot whisky and water in this little parlor; Mr. Mackenzie explaining that although his daughter was accustomed to spacious and gilded drawing-rooms where such a thing was impossible, she would do anything to make her friends welcome and comfortable, and they might fill their glasses and their pipes with impunity. And Sheila sang again and again, all cheerful and sensible English songs, and she listened to the odd jokes and stories her friends had to tell her; and Mackenzie was delighted with the success of his plans and precautions. Was not her very appearance now a triumph? She was laughing, smiling, talking to every one; he had not seen her so happy for many a day.