Shenacs Work at Home | Page 4

in their
father's house--three girls and Dan, the youngest of the family, who
was twelve years of age. The children of these two families had always
been good friends. Indeed, the younger children of Angus Dhu had

more pleasure in the house of their father's cousin than in their own
home; and many a winter evening they were in the habit of passing
there.
They had a very quiet winter after Lewis went away. There was less
visiting and going about in the moonlight evenings than ever before;
for the boys were all too young to go with them except Hamish, and he
was a cripple, and not so well as usual this winter, and though the girls
were quite able to take care of themselves, they had little pleasure in
going alone. So Angus Dhu's girls used to take their knitting and their
sewing to the other house, and they all amused themselves in the
innocent, old-fashioned ways of that time.
Shenac seldom went to visit her cousins; for, besides the fact that her
father's house was the pleasantest meeting-place, her brother Hamish
could not often go out at night, and she would rarely consent to leave
him; and no one added so much to the general amusement as Hamish.
He was very skilful at making puzzles and at all sorts of arithmetical
questions, and not one of them could sing so many songs or tell so
many stories as he. He was very merry and sweet-tempered too. His
being a cripple, and different from all the rest, had not made him
peevish and difficult to deal with as such misfortunes are so apt to do,
and there was no one in all the world that Shenac loved so well as her
twin-brother Hamish.
I suppose I ought to describe Shenac more particularly, as my story is
to be more about her than any of the other MacIvors. A good many
years after the time of which I am now writing; I heard Shenac
MacIvor--or, as English lips made it, Jane MacIvor--spoken of as a
very beautiful woman (the Gaelic spelling is Sinec); but at this time I
do not think it ever came into the mind of anybody to think whether she
was beautiful or not. She had one attribute of beauty--perfect health.
There never bloomed among the Scottish hills, which her father and
mother only just remembered, roses and lilies more fresh and fair than
bloomed on the happy face of Shenac, and her curls of golden brown
were the admiration and envy of her dark haired cousins. They called
little Flora a beauty, and a rose, and a precious darling; but of Shenac

they said she was bright and good, and very helpful for a girl of her age;
and her brother Hamish thought her the best girl in the world--indeed,
quite without a fault, which was very far from being true.
For Shenac had plenty of faults. She had a quick, hot temper, which,
when roused, caused her to say many things which she ought not to
have said. Hamish thought all those sharp words were quite atoned for
by Shenac's quick and earnest repentance, but there is a sense in which
it is true that hasty and unkind words can never be unsaid.
Shenac liked her own way too in all things. This did not often make
trouble, however; for she had learned her mother's household ways, and,
indeed, had wonderful taste and talent for these matters. Being the only
daughter of the house, except little Flora, and her mother not being very
strong, Shenac had less to do in the fields than her cousins, and was
busy and happy in the house, except in harvest-time, when even the
little lads, her brothers, were expected to do their part there.
Hamish and Shenac were very much alike, as twins very often are--that
is, they were both fair, and had the same-coloured hair and eyes. But,
while Shenac was rosy and strong, the very picture of health, her
brother was thin and pale, and often of late there had been a look of
pain on his face that it made his mother's heart ache to see. They were
all in all to each other--Shenac and Hamish. They missed Lewis less on
this account, and they knew very little of the troubles that so often
made their father and mother anxious; and the first months of winter
passed happily over them after Lewis went away.
Christmas passed, and the new year came in. A few more pleasant
weeks went by, and then there came terrible tidings to the house of
Angus Bhan. Far away, on one of the rapids of the Grand River, a boat
had been overturned. Three young men had been lost under the ice. The