“Ye’ll have one of your own, next season, Ronald, and, I doubt not, it will show light betimes. So willing as ye are to help in the field and on the water, we owe ye our toil when the storms come. The field once laid out, and the profits of the fish safe pouched, and Fergus’s peat stored, he and I will be your servants in our turn, Ronald, and cut and cull weed as fast as ye can draw it in. The rope is begun already.” “Is it? How thoughtful ye are, Ella! When could ye find time to think of my rope?” “O, there’s ever time for what ought to be provided. I have thinned the pony’s tail now and then for a long time, so that I have near hair enough; and when Archie was heavy one day, I thought I could work for you and sing to him at one time; and in the storm yesterday I twisted more. We shall have a long stout rope before the first large drift of weed, and if ye crop the ledges as plentifully as they promise, we shall have a grand fire, one of the first of the season. How proud it will make me, Ronald, to help to row over your first venture of kelp!” “Not so proud as it will make me to put the money into the pouch, Ella. To think that I help to pay the laird!” “I wish it might be into his own hands,” said Ella. “I should like to make you the bearer of it then.” “And if not,” said Ronald, “it will be honour enough to discharge ourselves of Mr. Callum. Ye have taught me my lesson there, Ella; and when the time comes, I’ll show ye a picture of yourself as like as a lad can be to a tall woman. I’ll go out beside the door when I hear the pace of his pony on the shingle, and fold my arms in my plaid, and make a reverence about half as low as to the laird, only stiffer. And I’ll show the lap of the pouch and say, Here are the laird’s dues. Would it please you to count them now or when we have pledged your head and ours?’” “Ye’re a saucy lad,” said Ella: “you know he can’t bear to hear that any one is head over him.” “That is the very reason everybody puts him in mind of it,” replied Ronald. “Well; all this time Fergus is holding his pony, and you are spreading the best cloth, and he is looking doubtful whether he shall come in, not liking the coldness of people so far below him, but smelling the hot goose very savoury.—So he comes in to count the dues at any rate, after which—” “Now, Ronald, hold your tongue, or we shall have no dues to count. I’ve done my meal, and see where we have drifted, and the sun going down too.”