“Are you really?”
“Yes.”
“Then hear my commands. You shall not go out in time of rain without putting something over your head or taking an umbrella. You shall not go out in the Maighdean-mhara without taking some one with you besides Mairi. You shall never, if you are away from home, go within fifty yards of the sea, so long as there is snow on the rocks.”
“But that is so very many things already; is it not enough?” said Sheila.
“You will faithfully remember and observe these rules?”
“I will.”
“Then you are a more obedient girl then I imagined or expected; and you may now, if you are good, have the satisfaction of offering me a glass of sherry and a biscuit, for, rain or no rain, Lewis is a dreadful place for making people hungry.”
Mackenzie need not have been afraid. Strange as it may appear, Lavender was well content with the wet weather. No depression or impatience or remonstrance was visible on his face when he went to the blurred windows, day after day, to see only the same desolate picture—the dark sea, the wet rocks, the gray mists over the moorland and the shining of the red gravel before the house. He would stand with his hands in his pocket and whistle “Love in thine eyes forever plays,” just as if he were looking out on a cheerful Summer sunrise. When he and Sheila went to the door, and were received by a cold blast of wet wind and a driving shower of rain, he would slam the door to again, with a laugh, and pull the girl back into the house. Sometimes she would not be controlled; and then he would accompany her about the garden as she attended to her duties, or would go down to the shore with her to give Bras a run. From these excursions he returned in the best of spirits, with a fine color in his face; until, having got accustomed to heavy boots, impervious frieze and the discomfort of wet hands, he grew to be about as indifferent to the rain as Sheila herself, and went fishing or shooting or boating with much content, whether it was wet or dry.
“It has been the happiest month of my life—I know that,” he said to Mackenzie as they stood together on the quay at Stornoway.
“And I hope you will hef many like it in the Lewis,” said the old man, cheerfully.