And so the months went slowly by, and Lavender raved about Sheila, and dreamed about Sheila, and was always going to begin some splendid achievement for Sheila's sake, but never just managed to begin. After all, the future did not look very terrible, and the present was satisfactory enough. Mrs. Lavender had no objection whatever to listening to his praises of Sheila, and had even gone the length of approving of the girl's photograph when it was shown her. But at the end of six months Lavender suddenly went down to Sloane street, found Ingram in his lodgings, and said, "Ingram, I start for Lewis to-morrow."
"The more fool you!" was the complacent reply.
"I can't bear this any longer: I must go and see her."
"You'll have to bear worse if you go. You don't know what getting to Lewis is in the winter. You'll be killed with cold before you see the Minch."
"I can stand a good bit of cold when there's a reason for it," said the young man; "and I have written to Sheila to say I should start to-morrow."
"In that case I had better make use of you. I suppose you won't mind taking up to Sheila a sealskin jacket that I have bought for her."
"That you have bought for her!" said the other.
How could he have spared fifteen pounds out of his narrow income for such a present? And yet he laughed at the idea of his ever having been in love with Sheila.
Lavender took the sealskin jacket with him, and started on his journey to the North. It was certainly all that Ingram had prophesied in the way of discomfort, hardship and delay. But one forenoon, Lavender, coming up from the cabin of the steamer into which he had descended to escape from the bitter wind and the sleet, saw before him a strange thing. In the middle of the black sea and under a dark gray sky lay a long wonder-land of gleaming snow. Far as the eye could see the successive headlands of pale white jutted out into the dark ocean, until in the south they faded into a gray mist and became invisible. And when they got into Stornoway harbor, how black seemed the waters of the little bay and the hulls of the boats and the windows of the houses against the blinding white of the encircling hills!
"Yes," said Lavender to the captain, "it will be a cold drive across to Loch Roag. I shall give Mackenzie's man a good dram before we start."