Well, that little incident of Ailasa and the flounder was rather
pleasant to him. It did not shock the romantic associations he had
begun to weave around his fair companion. But when they had gone up
to the cottages--Mackenzie and Ingram not yet having arrived--and
when Sheila proceeded to tell him about the circumstances of the
fishermen's lives, and to explain how such and such things were done
in the fields and in the pickling-houses, and so forth, Lavender was
a little disappointed. Sheila took him into some of the cottages, or
rather hovels, and he vaguely knew in the darkness that she sat down
by the low glow of the peat-fire, and began to ask the women about all
sorts of improvements in the walls and windows and gardens, and what
not. Surely it was not for a princess to go advising people about
particular sorts of soap, or offering to pay for a pane of glass if
the husband of the woman would make the necessary aperture in the
stone wall. The picture of Sheila appearing as a sea-princess in a
London drawing-room was all very beautiful in its way, but here she
was discussing as to the quality given to broth by the addition of a
certain vegetable which she offered to send down from her own garden
if the cottager in question would try to grow it.

"I wonder, Miss Mackenzie," he said at length, when they got outside,
his eyes dazed with the light and smarting with the peat-smoke--"I
wonder you can trouble yourself with such little matters that those
people should find out for themselves."

The girl looked up with some surprise: "That is the work I have to do.
My papa cannot do everything in the island."

"But what is the necessity for your bothering yourself about such