acquaintance with a fine lady who goes to all these grand places and
knows all sorts of swell people; so you'll have to cut me, Sheila."

"I hope I shall be dead before that time ever comes," said the girl
with a sudden flash of indignation in her eyes. Then she softened:
"But it is not kind of you to laugh at me."

"Of course I did not laugh at you," he said taking both her hands in
his, "although I used to sometimes when you were a little girl and
talked very wild English. Don't you remember how vexed you used to be,
and how pleased you were when your papa turned the laugh against me by
getting me to say that awful Gaelic sentence about 'A young calf ate a
raw egg'?"

"Can you say it now?" said Sheila, with her face getting bright and
pleased again. "Try it after me. Now listen."

She uttered some half dozen of the most extraordinary sounds that any
language ever contained, but Ingram would not attempt to follow her.
She reproached him with having forgotten all that he had learnt
in Lewis, and said she should no longer look on him as a possible
Highlander.

"But what are _you_ now?" he asked. "You are no longer that wild girl
who used to run out to sea in the Maighdean-mhara whenever there was
the excitement of a storm coming on."

"Many times," she said slowly and wistfully, "I will wish that I could
be that again for a little while."