Thistle and Thyme by Sorche Nic Leodhas

for a week or two, they began to find words to say to each other. Soon they knew all there was to know about each other. He said that she’d done well to leave her father’s house, and she said the blue eyes and golden hair and the grace of his true love must be the wonder of the world! So, since they were so well agreed, both of them were content.
    About that time, she took to coming down to the shore of an evening to help him beach the boat and spread the nets. She was only a wee thing, and it gave him a laugh to see her lay hold of the big boat. But for all that, she was sturdy, so her help was worth something to him. He was glad enough to have it when he came in tired after the day’s work.
    It came to his mind once, as she ran up the path before him to make sure his supper’d be good and hot, that she was bonny enough in her own way. To be sure, there was naught of the blue and gold of his true love about her and she’d never be reminding a man of a young ash tree. She was as brown of skin and hair and eye as an autumn hazelnut, and so small you’d be taking her for a bairn at first sight. But for all that, she was neatly made, and she was as light on her feet as a dry leaf borne on the wind.
    Before he knew it, half of the days of his time were over. She was the one who told him so, for she had figured it out on a chart she’d made, marking the days off one by one. It, was right clever of her, he said, for he’d have never thought of doing such a thing himself.
    Now that they were so well acquainted, she began to grow bolder. She never could be happy unless she was busying herself with something or other. It wasn’t enough that the house was tidy and clean. First, it was flowers that she brought from the fields to plant by the house wall. Then it was a wild rose that she trained to twine above the door. Now, she began to ask him to fetch things from the town where he sold his fish. He must bring glass for the window holes to keep the weather out. He grumbled a bit, but he brought the glass and made frames for it too, and fitted the windows into their places in the wall.
    Then she said the room was too bare, so he must fetch her a bit of goods for her to be making curtains of. He told her they’d been getting along well enough before they ever had either glass or curtains for the windows. But she only said that that was then and this was now, and for him to be off because she had work to do even if he didn’t.
    Then he must bring some white to wash the walls with inside, for the room was too dreary and dark. What with one thing and another, he complained that she wore him out and kept his pocket light.
    It was about this time that he found out that she’d been laying a pallet in the shed to sleep on of nights among the oars and the fishing gear. He’d never given a thought to where she slept, but when he found it out, he took steps to change it. He laid off from his fishing for a time and got busy at it.
    When she saw him about the place, measuring and hauling stone and hacking at this and that, she came out to watch him. “What will you be at now?” she asked.
    â€œI’m building a room to the house,” said he.
    â€œWhatever for?” said she.
    â€œFor you to have a place for yourself,” he told her. ’Tisn’t seemly that you should be sleeping amongst the bait and the boat gear.”
    â€œOch!” said she and went back into the house. But he heard her singing as she went about her work, and it came to his mind that his mother used to do the same.
    So the days slipped by. Soon there were a wheen of them marked off on the lass’s chart and but a few days left to be marked.
    The house had a but and a ben with glass in the windows of both of the rooms and curtains to all of the windows, as well as glass. The walls were white as milk, and there was a drugget on the floor that the lass had made herself, and a hearth with a hob