CHAPTER XXXI.
At length the boat was calked, tarred, and painted.
One evening as Annie entered the workshop, she heard Curly cry, "Here she is, Alec!" and Alec answer, "Let her come.

I'm just done." Alec stood at the stern of the boat, with a pot in one hand, and a paint-brush in the other; and, when Annie came near, she discovered to her surprise, and not a little to her delight, that he was just finishing off the last E of "THE BONNIE ANNIE." "There," said he, "that's her name.

Hoo de ye like it, Annie ?" Annie was too much pleased to reply.

She looked at it for a while with a flush on her face: and then turning away, sought her usual seat on the heap of spales.
How much that one winter, with its dragons and its heroes, its boat-building and its rhymes, its discomforts at home and its consolations abroad, its threats of future loss, and comforts of present hope, had done to make the wild country child into a thoughtful little woman! Now who should come into the shop at the moment but Thomas Crann!--the very man of all men not to be desired on the occasion; for the boys had contemplated a certain ceremony of christening, which they dared not carry out in the presence of the stone-mason; without which, however, George Macwha was very doubtful whether the little craft would prove a lucky one .-- By common understanding they made no allusion to the matter, thus postponing it for the present.
"Ay! ay! Alec," said Thomas; "sae yer boat's bigget at last!" He stood contemplating it for a moment, not without some hardly perceptible signs of admiration, and then said: "Gin ye had her out upon a muckle water, do ye think ye wad jump oot ower the side o' her, gin the Saviour tauld ye, Alec Forbes ?" "Ay wad I, gin I war richt sure he wantit me." "Ye wad stan' an' parley wi' him, nae doot ?" "I bude (behoved) to be richt sure it was his ain sel', ye ken, an' that he did call me." "Ow ay, laddie! That's a' richt.

Weel, I houp ye wad.