"Aye, dearie, I knew Sheila McTavish well, for when I was a slip of a girl I had a bad illness, and my mother's cousin, Effie Stuart, took me back with her to the Highlands to bide with her for more than a year. The McTavish cottage was next to ours, and not a day passed that I did not see Sheila coming up from the loch-side with her creel, with her bare feet and red petticoat, and maybe a plaid over her bonnie brown hair. I was always a homely body, even in my young days, but never before or since have I seen a lovelier face than Sheila McTavish, 'the Flower of the Deeside'--that was what they called her." "Was she engaged to McGill then?" "Aye, my dearie. She had broken the sixpence with him, but he was away in India then. I remember one day, as I sat on the churchyard wall, Sheila came over the moor, and she had a sprig of white heather in her hand. She held it up to me with a smile. 'It is good luck, Kezia,' she said, and her eyes seemed full of brown sunshine, 'and this morning I have heard from Fergus McGill himself, and it is he who is the guid lad with his letters. He is coming home, he says, and then we are to be wed, and it is the white heather that will bring us luck.' Ah, dearie, before three weeks were over, Sheila, our sweet Flower of the Deeside, lay in her coffin, and they put the white heather on her dead breast; and when Fergus McGill came home there was only the grave under the rowan tree. There, there, it is a queer world," finished Nurse Marks, "and there is many a love-story left unfinished, for 'man' (and woman, too) 'is born into trouble,' and I know that the women get the worst of it sometimes; for it stands to reason," continued the old woman, garrulously, "that they think a deal more of a love tale. Now, as we have finished tea, shall I take you to your room, my dearie? It is called the Pansy Room, and is close to mine. Miss Althea is a grand one for giving names. All the bedrooms are called after flowers, to match the paper and cretonne. There is the Rose Room and the Forget-me-not and the Pink Room, and the Leafy Room, and the Marigold Room, where they put gentlemen." "Which is Miss Althea's?" asked Waveney, quickly. "Oh, the Rose Room. Miss Althea has a passion for roses. Miss Doreen sleeps in the Forget-me-not Room; everything is blue there. The other rooms are for their guests, but near the servants' quarters there are two pretty little attics called 'Faith' and 'Charity,' where they put shop-girls who have broken down and need a rest; and these are never empty all the year round. There is a little sitting-room attached, where they take their meals. There, they are crossing the tennis-lawn this moment from the Porch House. The tall one is Laura Cairns; she has had an operation and has only just left the hospital, and the little fat one is Ellen Sturt; there is not much the matter with her except hard work and too much standing."