Lippincott's Magazine, page 109 by Various Authors
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eased my papa so much. I know when he is pleased, though he does not speak of it; and it is not often he will be so much pleased."
"And you, Sheila?" said the young man, unconscious of the familiarity he was using, and only remembering that she had scarcely thanked him for the other sketch.
"Well, there is nothing that will please me so much as to see him pleased," she said with a smile.
He was about to open the door for her, but he kept his hand on the handle, and said, earnestly enough, "But that is such a small matter--an hour's work. If you only knew how gladly I would live all my life here if only I could do you some greater service--"
She looked a little surprised, and then for one brief second reflected. English was not wholly familiar to her: perhaps she had failed to catch what he really meant. But at all events she said gravely and simply, "You would soon tire of living here: it is not always a holiday." And then, without lifting her eyes to his face, she turned to the door, and he opened it for her and she was gone.
It was about ten o'clock when they went outside for their evening stroll, and all the world had grown enchanted since they had seen it in the colors of the sunset. There was no night, but a strange clearness over the sky and the earth, and down in the south the moon was rising over the Barvas hills. In the dark green meadows the cattle were still grazing. Voices of children could be heard in the far distance, with the rumble of a cart coming through the silence, and the murmur of the streams flowing down to the loch. The loch itself lay like a line of dusky yellow in a darkened hollow near the sea, having caught on its surface the pale glow of the northern heavens, where the sun had gone down hours before. The air was warm and yet fresh with the odors of the Atlantic, and there was a scent of Dutch clover coming across from the sandy pastures nearer the coast. The huts of the small hamlet could but faintly be made out beyond the dark and low-lying pastures