kindness and thoughtfulness, she considered.

"Frank is up stairs," she said, "getting ready some things to go
to Brighton. Will you come into the breakfast-room? Have you had
breakfast?"

"Oh, you were going to Brighton?"

"Yes," she said; and somehow something moved her to add quickly, "but
not for long, you know. Only a few days. It is many a time you
will have told me of Brighton long ago in the Lewis, but I cannot
understand a large town being beside the sea, and it will be a great
surprise to me, I am sure of that."

"Ay, Sheila," he said, falling into the old habit quite naturally,
"you will find it different from Borvabost. You will have no
scampering about the rocks with your head bare and your hair flying
about. You will have to dress more correctly there than here even;
and, by the way, you must be busy getting ready, so I will go."

"Oh no," she said with a quick look of disappointment, "you will not
go yet. If I had known you were coming--But it was very late when we
will get home this morning: two o'clock it was."

"Another ball?"

"Yes," said the girl, but not very joyfully.

"Why, Sheila," he said with a grave smile on his face, "you are
becoming quite a woman of fashion now. And you know I can't keep up an