Margaret Maclaren, with temper considerably ruffled by certain happenings that day, was busy clearing up what she called a "clamjamphrey" in one of the upper rooms when she saw her mistress coming slantwise across the Moor. It was now five o’clock, and she immediately ran down to see whether the kettle was boiling, in case Miss Isla wanted tea. Margaret had not been down the Glen at all during these last days and had not so much as seen the funeral of the Laird--in itself a serious omission. Then that day she had had a quarrel with Diarmid anent certain household arrangements which they had not been able to adjust to her satisfaction and which were waiting the judgment of Miss Isla. Diarmid, a little puffed up perhaps with the attention he had received at Achree and the deference the American servants had paid him, had been a little high-handed with Margaret on his return. Hence the explosion on her part. The truth was that both were too strong-minded and quick tempered, and that both wished to assert their authority, and it was hopeless to think that they would ever get on together at Achree, where most of the servants had been younger than Diarmid, who had lorded it over them all. But Margaret held him again, as she expressed it, and they had been almost continuously at loggerheads since he had come to Creagh. When Margaret saw him waiting at the door to receive his mistress she cast her head in the air and went by him with a small snort that spoke volumes. Isla just saw her disappear through the little doorway at the end of the short passage, and, in answer to Diarmid’s anxious query whether she wanted any tea, she simply said "No," and asked where her brother was. But Diarmid could not tell her more than the brief fact that he had gone out after tea without saying where he was going. Isla, with an odd sense of strangeness and detachment from the interior of the house, climbed the stairs and, as she reached the door of her own room, she heard a heavier foot behind her and beheld Margaret, who was of a substantial build, puffing on the uppermost steps of the stairs. "Well, Margaret?" she said kindly. "We’ve come back you see, and have to begin again." "Yes. Miss Isla. Please, can I speak to you for a minute or so? There’s things in this house that must be sorted." "Sorted" was a great word with Margaret. She sorted everything from the fire to the hens that she chased out of the little garden or the keeper’s boys whom she hounded back to the Moor. Her temper was quick and her tongue not very reserved, but her heart was of gold towards the house she served. "Why, surely. Come into my room. What’s the matter with you? You look angry." "I hope it’s a righteous anger, Miss Isla. All I want to ken iss--What are the duties of Diarmid an’ what are mine in this hoose?"