He cut the top neatly off his third egg and proceeded to enjoy it. Malcolm had a healthy appetite, and Margaret Maclaren, still more or less in a state of grumbling rebellion, said that he was hard to fill. "Look here, Isla, I wish you would take a sensible view of things and leave me to manage my own business. You won’t deny that the management is mine now, I suppose? Unfortunately for me, you’ve been Laird of Achree for the last five or six years, and you’re difficult to follow. It’s just like what happens in a regiment when an easy Colonel is followed by a smart one. Every unit in it jibs, but they all come into line a little later. And that’s what the tenants--my tenants--are going to do if you’ll let them alone. But you must let them alone, do you understand? I am sick of all this wrangling, and I won’t listen to you any more. It isn’t decent for you to act as go-between among the tenants. If they have a grievance let them come to me. Next time you see the Maclures you can tell them it will pay them to address themselves to me instead of putting up a poor face to you." Isla’s colour rose, for both the words and the manner of them were offensive. "It would be better for yourself, too," he added in a gentler tone. "I don’t suppose you ever look at yourself in the glass. You’ve gone off most frightfully of late. It’s the worry and the bearing of loads for other folk that they are perfectly able to bear themselves that are to blame for that. Take me, for instance. You’d like to melt me down and drop me into your own mould. But, my dear, it can’t be done. Leave me to go my own way. Maybe it’s a blundering bad way, but at least give me credit for trying to make the best of things. Once for all, I won’t be dictated to or legislated for. There isn’t in the whole world a more difficult or impossible person to live with than the woman who wants to run a universal conscience." There was just sufficient truth in the words to make their sting doubly telling. "If that is how you feel about me, Malcolm," she said, rising stiffly, "then the sooner I leave Creagh the better." "A visit to the Barras Mackinnons would do you a power of good, I admit, and would give me time to look round and get my bearings," he said frankly. "The quarters are a bit close here, you know, for us in our present state. Why not go to Wimereaux to them? The sea air would do you good, and they’ve asked you often enough, in all conscience." She rolled up her napkin and pushed it all awry into the ring with the Mackinnon crest on it, and her downcast eyes were full of strange fires. "I don’t want to be unjust or hard. Heaven knows I don’t, but you won’t do anything," continued Malcolm. "At Achree they’re always asking why you don’t come down, and I must say I think that, after all their kindness, you’ve treated them shabbily." "You go so much," she said sullenly. "We can’t both live on the American bounty."