"Why was I not told about this?" she said, turning indignantly to Käthchen. "What right had Mr. Purdie to decide—and go away without saying a word? I suppose he refused?—and that was to be all of it!"
But the little girl, hearing the lady talk in these altered tones, grew frightened; and tears started to her eyes.
"Please, I was not asking for the cow," she said, piteously; for she knew not what terrible mischief she had done. "I was not intending to make the lady angry——"
Mary turned to the girl, and put her hand in a kindly way on the raven-black hair.
"Don't you be alarmed, Isabel," she said, with a reassuring smile. "You have done no harm; you were quite right to tell me the story. And you need not be afraid; your mother shall have the cow; perhaps even two of them, if the byre is big enough. Now go into the garden and amuse yourself, until you hear the carriage come round."
However, it may here be said that in this instance Mr. Purdie was in no wise culpable. It appeared that the widow MacVean had two days before gone over to Cruagan, where she had a married daughter, in order to help in the fields; and her only chance of presenting the petition was by intercepting the factor on his way homeward. Whether she did or did not present the petition was of no immediate consequence: Mary had resolved upon offering up this cow, or perhaps even two cows, as a sort of sacrificial thanksgiving for her deliverance from the Meall-na-Fearn bog.
After breakfast they set out, Isabel seated beside the driver. And once again they came in sight of the Minard township, with its poor little crofts on the rocky soil, and the long sweep of white sand where, the tide being out, the people were busy with their sickles cutting the seaweed from the rocks.
"I wonder," said Mary, meditatively, "if I couldn't revive the kelp-burning?"
"Oh, no," said Käthchen (who did not quite understand how indefatigable the young proprietress had been in qualifying herself for her new position). "That is all over now. Those were the grand days for the Highlands—for both the landlords and the people; but modern chemistry has spoiled all that."
"You don't know, then," said Mary, quietly, "that kelp-burning is carried on in some places at this moment? It is, though. Over in South Uist the crofters get from £2 10s. to £3 a ton for kelp. But perhaps they need all the seaweed they can get here for their crofts, or perhaps it isn't the right kind of tangle: I must find out about that."