An Island Apart
“The wind-swept sleet scratching against the window reminded her of the cold outside and, lighting the gasfire, she drew her chair as near as she dared to its hissing warmth. She sat stiffly, giving her clenched nerves a chance to relax, for despite her show of composure during the altercation with Isabel and Mac, she had felt outraged at the way they had spoken to her. Now in the privacy of her room outrage waned slowly into self-reproach for having been stupid enough to allow such a shabby pai...r to crack her customary forbearance. Tonight, especially tonight, she had needed to be calm so as to ponder over the events of the past few days.
The dispute had not been her fault, she comforted herself. It wasn’t her nature to be easily roused to angry retort. A child of the Hebrides, she had been inculcated since birth with the pride and the tolerance of the Islander: with the essentiality of masking anger with placidity. She was no stranger to censure. There had been trying times even when her friend Mrs Ross had been the owner of ISLAY, for though the old lady had always taken great pains to ensure that guests were respectable and well-behaved, there had been the inevitable misfits and bracing herself to endure their crankiness had imbued in Kirsty an equanimity of character that had proved well able to withstand provocation.MoreLess
The dispute had not been her fault, she comforted herself. It wasn’t her nature to be easily roused to angry retort. A child of the Hebrides, she had been inculcated since birth with the pride and the tolerance of the Islander: with the essentiality of masking anger with placidity. She was no stranger to censure. There had been trying times even when her friend Mrs Ross had been the owner of ISLAY, for though the old lady had always taken great pains to ensure that guests were respectable and well-behaved, there had been the inevitable misfits and bracing herself to endure their crankiness had imbued in Kirsty an equanimity of character that had proved well able to withstand provocation.MoreLess
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