The Twa Miss Dawsons

Margaret Murray Robertson

"The Twa Miss Dawsons"

Chapter One.

“Auld Miss Jean.”

Saughleas was not a large estate, nor were the Dawsons gentlefolks, in the sense generally accepted in the countryside.

It was acknowledged that both the mother and the wife of the new laird had had good blood in their veins; but George Dawson himself, had been, and, in a sense, still was, a merchant in the High-street of Portie. He was banker and ship-owner as well, and valued the reputation which he had acquired as a business man, far more than he would ever be likely to value any honour paid to him as the Laird of Saughleas.

He had gotten his land honestly, as he had gotten all else that he possessed. He had taken no advantage of the necessities of the last owner, who had been in his power, in a certain sense, but had paid him the full value of the place; and not a landed proprietor among them all had more pride in the name and fame of his ancestry, than he had in the feet that he had been the maker of his own fortune, and that no man, speaking truth, could accuse him, in the making of it, of doing a single mean or dishonest deed.

His mother “had come o’ gentle bluid,” but his father had been first a common sailor and then the mate of a whaling ship that sailed many a time from the little Scottish east coast harbour of Portie, and which at last sailed away never more to return.

His widow lived through years of heart-sickness that must have killed her sooner than it did, but that her two fatherless bairns needed her care. They were but bairns when she died, with no one to look after them but a neighbour who had been always kind to them. The usual lot awaited them, it was thought. The laddie must take to the sea, as most of the laddies in Portie did, and the lassie must get “bit and sup” here and there among the neighbours, till she should be able to do for herself as a servant in some house in the town.

But it happened quite otherwise. Whatever the Dawsons had been in old times, there was good stuff in them now, it was said. For “Wee Jean Dawson,” as she was called, with few words spoken, made it clear that she was to make her own way in the world. She was barely fifteen at that time, and her brother was two years younger, and if she had told her plans and wishes, she would have been laughed at, and possibly effectually hindered from trying to carry them out. But she said nothing.

The rent of the two rooms which the children and their mother had occupied, was paid to the end of the year, and the little stock of pins and needles, and small wares generally, by the sale of which the mother had helped out the “white seam,” her chief dependence, was not exhausted, and Jean, declining the invitation of their neighbour to take up their abode with her in the mean time, quietly declared her intention of “biding where she was for a while,” and no one had the right to say her nay. Before the time to pay another quarter’s rent came round, it was ready, and Jean had proved her right to make her own plans, having shown herself capable of carrying them out when they were made.

How she managed, the neighbours could not tell, and they watched her with doubtful wonder. But it was not so surprising as it seemed to them. She was doing little more than she had been doing during the last two years of her mother’s life under her mother’s guidance. She had bought and sold, she had toiled late and early at the white seam, when her mother was past doing much, and had made herself busy with various trifles in cotton and wool, with crochet-needle and knitting-pins, when white seam failed them, and that was just what she was doing now.

And she went on bravely. She accepted offered favours gratefully, but sooner or later, she always repaid them. If Bell Ray, the fishwife, left a fresh haddock at the door as she passed, she was sure to carry with her some other day a pair of little socks, or a plaything for the bairnie at home. And if Mrs Sims, next door, kindly took the heaviest part of the girl’s washing into her hands, she got in return her Sunday “mutch” starched and ironed and its broad borders set up in a way that excited the admiring wonder of all.

The two rooms were models of neatness as they had always been. George was comfortably clothed, at least he was never ragged, he very rarely went hungry, and he went to the school as regularly, and to as good purpose, as the banker’s son, or the minister’s son, and was as obedient to Jean as he had been to his mother in the old days. Jean was neat, and more than neat in her black print frock and holland apron—it cannot be said of the first half year that she was never hungry. For many a time the portion set aside for the dinner of two was only enough for one, and it cost Jean less pain to go without her share than to let the growing laddie be stinted of his needed food. But after the first half year, they had enough, and some to spare to those who had less, and much as Jean sometimes needed money to add to her stock in trade, she had been too wisely taught by her mother, not to know that a sufficient quantity of simple and wholesome food was absolutely necessary for health of body and of mind, and therefore necessary for success in life.

Of course she was successful. In after years, when she used to go back to this time in her thoughts and in her talk, she attributed her success in business, chiefly to two things—her silence, and her determination never to fall into debt. To the talk which “neebour folk” fell into in her little shop, she listened, but she rarely added her word; and she so ordered matters that it never became, as it very easily might have been, a centre of gossip and a cause of trouble in the neighbourhood. As to falling into debt, her determination against it hindered her for a while; but when the “big” merchants of Portie came to know her and her ways, they gave her the benefit of the lowest prices in sales, so trifling to them, but so important to her. They helped her with advice, and put some advantages as to fashions and fabrics in her way; and best of all, when Geordie’s schooling was supposed to be at an end, one of them took him into his employment in a humble capacity indeed, but his rise to the place of honour behind the counter, and then to the book-keeper’s desk, was more rapid than generally happens in such a case as his.

Before Jean was seven and twenty years of age, she and her brother were equal partners in a fairly prosperous business established by her in the High-street. After this fortune was secure in the course of time.

They were equal partners for a good many years, but gradually, as their resources increased, and new ways of employing energy and capital were open to the brother, this was changed. With her usual prudence, Jean refused to engage in risks which she had not sufficient knowledge to guide or strength to control, and a change was made in their business relations, and each continued to prosper in the chosen way.

As time went on, Jean ruled well her brother’s home and helped him in many ways; but she did not, as had been predicted of her, grow into a mere hard business woman—seeing nothing so clearly as the main chance, and loving money itself better than the comfort that money may bring. It was they who knew her least, or who knew her only in her capacity of business woman, who feared this for her. The people who had watched and wondered at her early efforts and success, the neighbours, and the fisher wives who had exchanged kindly gifts with her in these days, did not fear it, nor the “puir bodies” in the back streets and lanes of Portie, who enjoyed the pickles o’ tea and snuff, and the bits of flannel that found their way to them from her hands, nor the mothers of fatherless bairns who “won through sair straits,” and got the better in many a “sair fecht” with poverty and trouble by her help.

Her silence and reserve, even to her friends—and she had many—looked to those who were not specially her friends, like the coldness and hardness that strengthens with the years. It was by deeds rather than words that her strong and tender nature found expression, and those who needed her help most, knew her best and trusted her most fully, and even in the busiest time of her life, she saw enough of other people’s cares and sorrows, to remind her that there was something more needed in life than money, or the good things that money could bring.

And, when she ought to have been past “the like o’ that,” as she said to herself, for she was not far from thirty, the wonderful gift of love was given to her. And then, through her love, came the gift which God is sure, sooner or later, to give to His own,—the gift of sanctified trouble.

There came to Portie in one of the ships in which her brother had an interest, a lad—he looked scarcely more than a lad—sick with fever. Accident brought him to George Dawson’s house for a night, and in the morning he was too ill to leave it. Through long weeks of suffering and delirium, Jean nursed him, and cared for him, and saved him from death. He was not a good young man. The wild words uttered in his wanderings, proved this to Jean, only too clearly, and if he had gone away as soon as he rose from his bed, he would have taken her interest and her good will with him, and nothing more. But his convalescence was long and tedious, and whatever his sins against himself and others might have been, he was of a sweet and kindly nature, and a handsome and manly lad withal.

And of course it was the fairest side of his character that he showed to Jean in these days. Not that he tried to hide his past follies and even his sins from her. But it was his sorrow for them that he showed her, and his longing to live a better life by her help; and what with his penitence and his gentleness and his winning English ways, he wiled the heart out of her breast before she was aware. And the love was mutual. But whether he ever could have given to her all that she gave to him, was doubtful to the only one who knew what had befallen her.

To say that her brother was amazed at her love for a man so much younger and mentally and morally so much beneath her, is to say little. He was utterly dismayed. But he knew her strong and steadfast nature too well to try to move her from her purpose. He only stipulated that there should be time given to prove the young man’s love, and to prove also the firmness of his determination to live a new life. It was not a severe test that he insisted on. One voyage the young man was to make, and coming home with the good word of his captain and shipmates, no difficulty should be put in the way of the marriage, strange as he confessed the idea of such a marriage to be. It was to be a six months’ voyage only, and though Jean did not feel that such a sacrifice need be made, she was yet willing to make it at the will of the brother whom she loved. And so they parted.

But six months passed, and then six more, and when three more had worn away tidings came. Through these months of waiting Jean went in silence, and when the captain’s son came home—the only survivor of the crew of the ship that had carried her heart and her hope away—and told the story of their wreck on wintry seas, no one knew that she listened and suffered as no widow of them all suffered for her cruel and utter loss.

Her lover’s name was spoken with the rest, and it was told how brave he had been and kindly, and how he had kept up the courage of the rest and cheered them all to the last, and how the hardest and most careless of the crew had planned together to beguile him into taking more than his share of the food they had, because he was not strong like the rest, and because they loved him. And Jean listened to it all, and never uttered a word. Nor afterward did she open her lips even to her brother. He tried to speak to her some vague words of comfort, as to its being God’s will, and all for the best, but she only put forth her hand to bid him cease, and when he still would fain have spoken a word of his own sorrow for her trouble she rose and went away, and it was many years before either of them returned to the sorrow of that time. She lived through her trouble, and she did not grow hard or bitter under it, as she might have done if he had lived and forgotten her; and comfort came to her as the years went on.

It came to her in a strange way, her brother thought, and though he was glad of its coming, it cost him some pain. The first, indeed the only, danger of estrangement that ever came between the brother and sister grew out of this. Not that there was any real danger even then; for Jean was, in her silent and determined way, so soft and gentle and unprovokable in the new manner of thought and life into which she fell at this time, that though her brother was both angry and ashamed, and suffered both shame and anger to appear to her and to others, it made no real breach between them.

And he had cause for neither shame nor anger. It was only that weary of herself and the drowsy ministrations of the parish kirk, Jean had strayed one stormy Sabbath night into “a little kirkie” lately built in a back street by “a queer kin’ o’ folk ca’ed missioners,” and had there heard words such as she had never heard before, and had found in them more than comfort.

Not that the words were altogether new, nor the thoughts,—they were in her Bible, every one of them—she told her brother afterwards; but, for one thing, they were earnestly spoken by one who believed them, and then they came to one ready for them and waiting, though she knew it not.

Ah! well, that does not explain it altogether. It was the Lord Himself who spoke to her by the voice of His servant revealing Himself to her, through His own familiar Word in a new way. After that she could say of Him, “Whose I am and whom I serve,” and her life took a new meaning. It was His who “had bought her with a price.” All that she had done hitherto for pity’s sake, she did now for His sake. “To one of the least of these,” He had said. The world was full of “these little ones” of His, and there were some of them in Portie even, and henceforth they were to be her care.

Her outward life did not change much however. Except that at first she “whiles” went to “the little kirkie,” and afterwards went there altogether, there was no difference that could be named by her little world generally. Her brother saw a difference, and so did the poor folk who shared her care and kindness. Her eye was brighter and her step lighter, and the look of suffering she had lately worn was giving place to a look of patient even cheerful peacefulness that was good to see. She had more words, too, at her command. Not for her brother—at least not for him at first. But the impulse which her new love for her Master had given her, was strong enough to overcome the silence natural to her, and “good words” gently and yet strongly spoken went with her gifts now, and sometimes they were received as gladly as her gifts. But that she should cast in her lot with the handful of “newfangled folk” in Stott’s Lane was a pain and a humiliation to her brother which it took years to outlive.

Their outward life went on as it had done before for a good while, and then her brother married. His wife was of a family which had had a name and a place in the countryside for generations; but George Dawson found her earning her bread as a teacher in a school in Aberdeen, and married her “for pure love,” Portie folk said; and some who had known him best, expected no such thing of George Dawson.

It was doubtful whether his love for her or his pride in her was strongest. He did not take her to the house above the shop where he and his sister had lived so long, but to a fine house at the head of the High-street in a far pleasanter part of the town, and there they began their married life together. Jean did not go with them, though they both wished it. It was better for them to be alone, she said, and as well for her. So she staid still in the house above the shop, making a home for the young men employed in the business, keeping a wise and watchful eye on them and on the business also. After a few years, when her sister-in-law became delicate, and there were little children needing her care, she, with greater self-denial than any guessed, gave up her independent life and went home to them for a while, and lightened the mother’s care for them and for the home as well, and found her reward in knowing that her work was not vain.

But when more years had passed, and her brother, a richer man than she knew, bought the small estate of Saughleas, and took his family there, she did not go with them. She was getting on in years, she was too old to begin a new life in new circumstances, and the bairns were getting beyond the need of her care. So she went to a home of her own that looked out upon the sea, and set herself with wisdom and patience and loving kindness to the work which her Master had given her to do.

Chapter Two.

The Brother’s Sorrow.

George Dawson had been very successful in life. He was not an old man when he took possession of his estate of Saughleas. He had many years before him in which to enjoy the fruit of his labours, he told himself, and he exulted in the thought.

What happy years the first years there were! His children were good and bonny and strong; his wife was—not very strong—but oh! so sweet and dear! What lady among them all could compare with her, so good and true, so fair and stately, and yet so kindly and so well-beloved?

“I will grow a better man to deserve her better,” he said to himself with a vague presentiment of change upon him—a fear that such happiness could not last. For who was he, that he should have so much more than other men had? So he walked softly, and did justly, and dealt mercifully in many a case where he might have been severe with justice on his side, and strove honestly and wisely to make himself worthy of the woman who had been growing dearer day by day.

Growing dearer? Yes—but who was slipping away from him, slowly, but surely, day by day. He strove to shut his eyes to that which others clearly saw, but deep down in his heart was the certain knowledge that he must lose her. But not yet. Not for a long time yet. With care in a warmer climate, under sunnier skies, she might live for years yet—many years. So he set himself to the task of so arranging his affairs, that he might take her away for the winter at least, away from the bleak sea winds to one of the many places where he had heard that health and healing had come to many a one far more ill than she was.

And if he could have got her away in time, who knows but so it might have been. But illness came in amongst the children, and she would not leave them even to the wise and loving care of their aunt; and when first one, and then another little life went out, her husband could see with a sinking heart, that she longed to follow where they had gone.

When the other children grew better he took her away for a little while. But the drawing of those little graves, and the longing to die at home among those who were still left, brought them back to Saughleas—only just in time. He did not lay her in the bleak kirkyard of Portie. He could not do it. It was a foolish thing to do, it was said, but in the quietest, bonniest spot in Saughleas, in a little wood that lay in sight of the house, he laid her down, when he could keep her no longer, and by and by he lifted her bonny little bairns and laid them down beside her. And then it seemed for a while that to him life was ended.

But life was not ended. He had more to do, and more to suffer yet, and indeed had to become a changed man altogether before he could be ready and worthy to look again upon the face that he so longed to see.

Oh, the length of the days! the weariness of all things! He used to wonder at the sickness that lay heavy on his heart all day—at the anguish that made the night terrible to him. He was growing an old man, he said to himself, and he had thought it was only the young who strove and suffered, and could not yield themselves to the misery of loss and pain. But then—who, old or young, of all the men he had ever known, had lost what he had lost? No wonder that he suffered and could find no comfort.

“Ay! No wonder that you suffer,” said his sister to him once. “But take tent lest ye add rebellion to the sin of overmuch sorrow. Have you ever truly submitted to God’s will all your life, think ye, George, man? Things had mostly gone well and easily with ye. But now this has come upon you, and take ye thought of it. For ye’re no’ out of God’s hand yet, and ‘whom He loveth He chasteneth.’”

She did not speak often to him, but he heard her and made no answer. That was Jean’s way of looking at things, he thought; and because she had had sore troubles of her own, he did not answer her roughly, as he felt inclined to do. There was nothing to be said.

He sent his two daughters away to be educated, first to Edinburgh and afterwards to London, and after that, the house of Saughleas, except a room or two, was shut up for a time. The father and son left it early and returned to it late, and the father spent his days in working as hard as ever he had done in the days when he was making his own way in the world. The winter was hard to bear, but the coming of the spring-time was even worse. Every bonny flower looked up at him with the eyes of her he had lost; every bird, and breeze, and trembling leaf spoke to him with her voice. The sunlight lying on her grave, the still, soft air, the sweetness of the season,—all brought back on him like a flood, the longing for her presence; and he must have gone away or broken down altogether, if it had not been for his son George, his only son.

He was a handsome, kindly lad, more like his mother than any of his bairns, and dearer than any of them to his father, because he was her firstborn. George had mourned his mother deeply and truly, but her name had never been spoken between them till on one of the first sunny days of spring, the father found the son lying on his face among the long withered grass that covered her grave. Sitting there then, lips and hearts were opened to each other, and it was never so bad to either after that.

By and by hope sprang up in the father’s heart, in the presence of the son who was so like his mother, and so the weight of his heavy sorrow was lightened.

But there were folk in Portie, and his sister Jean was one of them, who doubted whether the father was doing the best that could be done for his son. He held a situation in the Portie Bank, and his father’s intention was, that he should there, and elsewhere, when the right time came, acquire such a knowledge of business, as should enable him, if not to make money for himself, at least to make a wise use of the money already made for him.

But his work was made easy to the lad, as was natural enough, by others besides his father, and his comings and goings were not so carefully noted, as if he had not been his father’s son. He had time and money at his disposal; not so very much of either, but more than any of his companions had, and certainly more than was good for him. Not that he fell into ill ways at this time, though that was said of him. That only came afterwards; and it might have been helped, if his father had been as wise then as he was determined with him afterwards.

But that which raised his father’s anger, was almost worse, to his thought, than falling into ill ways, in the common acceptation of the term, would have been. He might have spent money freely, even foolishly, and his name might have been spoken with the names of men whose society his father would have shunned or scorned, and he might have been reproved and then forgiven. But that he should love and be determined to marry a girl in humble life, the daughter of a sailor’s widow, and he not one and twenty, seemed to his father worse than folly and even worse than sin. The father had never given a thought to any woman except his sister, till he was thirty-five, and that his son, a mere lad, should wish to marry any one, was a folly not to be tolerated.

He blamed his sister in the matter, for bonny Elsie Calderwood was the daughter of the man who had brought home to her the bitter tidings that her lover was lost, and Jean had cared for and comforted his widow and orphans when their turn came to weep for one who returned no more. But he was wrong in this, for she had known nothing of the young man’s wishes, certainly she had never abetted him in his folly, as was said. Indeed she had taken no thought of danger for him. “They were just a’ bairns thegither,” she had said, “and had kenned one another all their lives.”

For the Calderwood bairns had been the chosen companions of Geordie and his sisters in the days when, openly scorning the attendance of nursemaids, they had clambered over the rocks, and waded in the shallows along the shore, and gathered dulse and birds’ eggs with the rest of the bairns of the town. When his sisters went away, after their mother’s death; the intimacy was naturally enough continued by George, and all the more closely that he missed his sisters, and was oppressed by the dreariness of the life at home. It was natural enough, though the father could not see it so, and he spoke angrily and unwisely to his son.

But Mrs Calderwood was as proud in her way as Mr Dawson was in his, and she scorned the thought of keeping the rich man’s son to the promise he had made without leave asked of her. She was also as hard in her way as he was in his, and forbade the young man to enter her house, and gave him no chance to disobey her. But in a place like Portie young folks can meet elsewhere than at home, and one or other of them must be sent away.

So with Miss Jean’s advice and help Elsie was sent to get a year at a boarding-school, as was wise and right, all her friends in Portie were given to understand. But she went away without giving back her promise for all that her mother could say. She went cheerfully enough, “to make herself fitter to be his wife,” she said. But she never returned; a slow strong fever seized her where she was, and first her mother went to her, and then Miss Jean, whose heart was sore for them all.

And then Miss Jean did what the mother never would have done. When she saw that the end was drawing near, she wrote one letter to her nephew telling him to come and take farewell of his love, and another to his father telling him that so she had done. All this mattered little however. For it was doubtful whether the dying girl recognised the lover who called so wildly on her name. But she died in his arms, and he went home with her mother and his aunt to Portie and laid her down in the bleak kirkyard; and then he went away speaking no word to his father, in his youthful despair and anger, indeed never looking on his face.

There had been something said, before all this came to pass between them, of the lad’s being sent to London for a while, to learn how business was done in a great banking-house, one of the partners of which was a friend of his father; and after a time he was heard of there. But he did not write to his father directly, and he never drew a shilling of the money that his father had deposited in his name.

He did not stay long in his place in the London bank, but went away, leaving no trace behind him, and was lost to them all; and it was long before his name was spoken by his father again. Even Miss Jean, having no words of comfort to put with it, never named to him the name of his son, for whom she knew he was grieving with anger and pain unspeakable. It was to be doubted, Jean thought, whether these days were not longer, and drearier, and “waur to thole” than even the days that had followed the death of the mother of the lad.

But they had to be borne, and he left himself in these days little time for brooding over his troubles. He devoted himself to business, with all his old earnestness, and wealth flowed in upon him, and the fear was strong in his sister’s heart, that he was beginning, in the desolation that had fallen upon him, to love it for its own sake. He added to Saughleas a few fields on one side, and a farm or two on the other, which the necessities of the owners had put into the market, at this time; but it was more to oblige these needy men, than because he wanted their land. He had the money in hand, he said indifferently to his sister, and the land would ay bring its price. But he took little pleasure in Saughleas for a while.

When Geordie had been gone a year and more, his sisters came home from school. They had been away long, and their father had, as he said, to make their acquaintance over again. They had changed from merry girls of fifteen and sixteen, into grown up young ladies,—“fine ladies” their father called them to their aunt, and a good many people in Portie, called them “fine ladies” also, for a while. They looked to be fine ladies, with their London dresses, and London manners, and some folk added, their “London pride.” They held their heads high, and carried themselves erect and firmly as they walked, and spoke softly and in “high English,” which looked like pride to some of their old friends, who were more than half afraid of the young ladies of Saughleas, they said. But it soon came to be known that what looked like pride was more than half shyness, and as for the “high English,” the kindly Scotch fell very readily from their lips on occasion.

It cannot be said that they made themselves very happy in Saughleas for a time. They came home in November, and that is a dreary month on the east coast, indeed all the winter is dreary there. There were gay doings in the best houses in Portie to welcome them home, and they enjoyed them well. For they had only been school-girls in London, and the gayeties they had been permitted to mingle in there, had been mostly of the kind which are supposed to blend improvement of some sort with the pleasure to be enjoyed, and though they doubtless valued such opportunities and made good use of them, both for pleasure and improvement, the gayeties of Portie were quite different and more to their taste. They were young and pretty and gay, and the kindness and the admiration so freely bestowed on them were very pleasant to them both. But they would have preferred the house in the High-street, where they had all been born, in these first days, for their home.

Saughleas was dull and dreary in the short winter days, and oh! how they missed their mother! It was like losing her again, to come home to the great empty house, which their father left almost before the sun rose for weeks together, not to return again till the lamps had been lighted for hours in the wide hall.

And Geordie! When they had been at Saughleas a month or more, their father had never spoken his name, and when Jean, the eldest and bravest of the sisters, putting great force upon herself, asked him when her brother was coming home, he answered so coldly, and with words so hard and bitter, that her heart sank as she heard. They had known for some time that something had gone wrong between them. Geordie had told them that, when he had gone to see them in London; but the sad story of poor Elsie Calderwood they had never heard. They mourned for their brother, and longed for his coming home, thinking that the happy days that were gone would come again with him.

Though the estate of Saughleas was small, the house was both large and stately. The last owner had put into the house, the money which should have been given to enrich the land, and make a beginning of the prosperity of the family which he had hoped to found. So it was like a castle almost, but it was little like a home.

The two or three great landed proprietors in the countryside were great people in their own esteem, and in the general esteem also; and George Dawson, notwithstanding Saughleas, was just the merchant and banker of the High-street to them—a man much respected in his own place, and he was not out of place on occasion, at the table of any of them all. But an interchange of civilities on equal terms between the ladies of the families was not likely to take place, nor was this greatly to be desired. It might have been different if their mother had lived, they said to one another; for in their remembrance of her, she was superior in every way to any lady of them all. But they were quite content with the society of Portie, and would have been content with the house in the High-street as well.

Mr Dawson asked his sister to come and live in his house when his daughters came home, but she declined to do so. They did not need her as mistress of the house, and she believed that her influence over them would be more decided and salutary should she remain in her own house. They were good bairns, she said, who meant to do right, and though they might whiles need a word of advice, or a restraining touch, it must be their own guidance that their father must lippen to, and not hers. And Auntie Jean was right.

They were good bairns on the whole, as their aunt said, and they were “bonnie lassies” as well. The first idea that most people had on seeing them, was that in person, mind, and manners, they were very much alike. Even their father thought this at first. But it was not long before he discovered that in most respects they were very different May, the youngest, was like her mother, “though nothing like so bonny,” he told himself with a sigh. Jean was like her aunt, it was said, but Auntie Jean herself, and the two or three others who remembered Auntie Jean’s mother as she was before her husband’s ship went down, said that the elder sister was like her grandmother, who had been a far bonnier woman than ever her daughter had been.

In form and features there was a resemblance between the sisters; May was the fairer and slighter of the two, and was often called the prettier. But as time went on the resemblance did not increase. Jean was the strongest in person and in mind, and the better able of the two to profit by the discipline, which time and circumstances brought to them both, and of this difference in character her face gave token to those who had eyes to see.

They loved each other, and were patient and forbearing with each other when they did not quite agree as to the course which either wished to pursue. But when it came about that one must yield her will to the other, it was May who was made to yield when her will would have led her into wrong or doubtful paths. But if pleasure were to be given up, or a distasteful duty done, or if some painful self-denial had to be borne by one so that the other might escape, such things generally fell to the lot of Jean.

Chapter Three.

A Dreary Day.

The folk looking out of their windows in Portie might well wonder what could be bringing the young ladies of Saughleas into the town on such a dismal day. Though April was come in, it might have been the wintriest month of the year; for the wind that met them was dashing the wet sleet in their faces, and tangling their bright brown curls about their eyes, till laughing and breathless they were fain to turn their backs upon it before they were half down the High-street. They were in shelter for a little while as they crossed through a side street, but the wind met them again as they went round a corner, and came close upon the sea. They were going to their aunt’s house and a few steps brought them to the door; but for all the wind and the sleet, they did not seem in haste to enter. They lingered, taking off their dripping cloaks and overshoes.

“Auntie will wonder to see us on such a day.”

“She’ll wonder to see you. She kens that I am not afraid of wind or rain.”

As they lingered the door opened.

“Eh! Miss Dawson and Miss May. Is it you on sic a day? Wha would ha’e expected to see you—and on your ain feet too. Wet enough they must be.”

“We’ll go to the kitchen, Nannie, and no’ wet the carpet,” said May; and they staid there chatting with the maid for a minute or two. The expected greeting met them at the parlour door.

“Eh! bairns! Here on such a day!”

“Papa had to come to the town,” said Jean.

“And so we thought we might as well come with him,” said May.

“Weel, ye’re welcome anyway, and ye’re neither sugar nor salt to be harmed by a drop of rain. But come in by to the fire.”

But their tussle with the wind had made the fire unnecessary.

“It’s a good thing that your curls are no’ of a kind that the rain does ill with, May, my dear. But you might as well go up the stair and put them in order now.”

“Oh! I needna care. We have only a minute to stay, and it’s hardly worth my while.”

“Papa went straight to the inn with the dog-cart, and we only walked down the High-street. It is a dreary day.”

“And we’ll need to go to the inn and wait for him. For he said nothing of coming here,” said May.

“But it’s likely he’ll come for all that. He maistly ay looks in. It’s a pity he came out on sic a day, and him no weel. But I suppose he had to come. The ‘John Seaton’ sails the day,” said their aunt.

The sisters gave a sudden involuntary glance at each other. May reddened and laughed a little. Her sister grew pale. Their aunt looked from one to the other, thinking her own thoughts, but she did not let this appear.

“She mayna sail the day. They have lost some of their men, it is said, and that may hinder them.”

“And the wind and the waves are fearsome,” said the elder sister with a shiver.

“Ay, but the wind is in the richt airt. That wouldna hinder them,” said her aunt; and then she added in a little.

“Willie Calderwood goes as her first mate. That’s a rise for him. I hope he may show discretion. He’s no’ an ill laddie.”

“And he’s on a fair way to be a captain now,” said May. “So he told me—in awhile.”

“Ay, in a while,” said her aunt dryly. “But he has a long and dangerous voyage before him, and it’s no’ likely that all who sail awa’ the day will ever come hame again.”

The eldest sister was standing with her face touching the window.

“The sea looks fearsome over yonder,” said she.

“Ay. But they’ll ha’e room enough when once they are outside the harbour bar, and then the wind will drive them off the rocks and out to sea; and they are in God’s hands.”

“Auntie Jean,” said the girl turning a pale face toward her, “why do you say the like of that to-day?”

“It’s true the day as it’s true ilka day. Why should I no’ say it? My dear, the thought of it is a consolation to many a puir body in Portie the day.”

“But it sounds almost like a prophecy of evil to—to the ‘John Seaton,’ as you said it. And the sea is fearsome,” repeated she, turning her face to the window again.

“Lassie, come in by to the fire. Ye’re trembling with cold, and I dare say ye’re feet are no’ so dry as they should be. Come in by and put them to the fire.”

“But we havena long to bide.”

However she came at her aunt’s bidding, and sat down on a stool, shading her face with a paper that she took from the table.

“Auntie Jean,” said May, “I have seen just such a picture in a book, as you would make if you were painted just as you are, with your hands folded on your lap, and your stocking and your ball of worsted beside you, and your glasses lying on the open book. Look, Jeannie, look at auntie. Is she not like a picture as she sits now?”

“What’s the lassie at now, with her picturing and her nonsense?” said her aunt, not sure whether she should be pleased with all this. “I’m just as usual, and so is the room. No more like a picture than on other days.”

She was in full dress—according to her ideas of full dress—and she was that every day of the year. She had on a gown of some soft black stuff, the skirt of which was partly covered by a wide black silk apron. A snowy kerchief was pinned across her breast, and fastened at her neck with a plain gold brooch, showing a braid of hair of mingled black and grey. Her cap was made in the fashion worn by the humblest of her countrywomen, but it was made of the finest and clearest lawn, and the full “set up” borders were edged with the daintiest of “thread” lace, and so were the wide strings tied beneath her chin. Not a spot nor a speck was visible upon it, or upon any part of her dress, nor indeed on any article which the room contained. She and her room together would have made a picture homely and commonplace enough, but it would have been a pleasing picture, with a certain quaint beauty of its own.

“It is that you are so peaceful in here always, and untroubled. That is what May means when she says it is like a picture in a book. And after the wind, and the sleet, and the stormy sea, it is quieting and restful to look in upon you.”

“Weel, maybe. But it is the same picture ilka day o’ the year, and I weary of it whiles. And the oftener you look in upon it, the better it will be for me. What ails the lassie? Canna ye bide still by the fire?”

For Jean had risen from her low seat, and was over at the window again.

“The clouds are breaking away. It is going to be fair, I think. We’ll need to be going, May, or we may be late. I’ll come over to-morrow, auntie, and good-bye for to-day.”

“But, lassie, what’s a’ your haste? Your father will be sure to come for you. Bide still where you are.”

“I think I’ll bide still, anyway,” said May. “I am no’ going, Jeannie. I’m no’ caring to go.”

“Yes, you are coming with me,” said her sister sharply. “You must come. I want to speak to you—and—yes, come away.”

May pouted and protested, but she followed her sister to the kitchen where they had left their cloaks, and they went away together. They kept for a while in the shelter of the houses nearest the sea, but they did not speak till they were beyond these. The wind was still high, but neither rain nor sleet was falling, and they paused a minute to take breath before they turned to meet it again.

“The ‘John Seaton’ sails the day,” said May, turning her laughing face toward her sister. Jean did not laugh. “As though that werena the very thing that brought us both out as well as papa, though we said nothing about it before we came. To the high rocks? But it would be more sensible like to go to the pier head, and then we might get a chance to shake his hand and say God bless him. And it’s not too late yet.”

“No, I’m no’ going. It would do no good and it would anger my father.”

But May persisted.

“Why shouldna we be there as well as half the town? Papa mightna like it, but he couldna help it, if we were once there. And ye ken ye never said good-bye to Willie Calderwood.”

“May,” said her sister, “when did you see Willie? I mean, when did he tell you that he was to be first mate of the ‘John Seaton,’ and maybe captain by and by?”

“Oh! I heard that long ago, and I saw him last night. He came a bit of the way home with me. He would have come all the way to say good-bye to you, but he had something to do, that couldna be put off. And I’m sure he’ll expect to see you at the pier to-day.”

“But I canna go.”

And then she added—“Well, and what more did he say?”

“Oh! what should he say? He said many a thing. He told me if I would stand on the high rocks above the Tangle Stanes and wave my scarlet scarf when the ‘John Seaton’ was sailing by, he would take it as a sign of good luck, and that he would come safe home again, and get his heart’s wish.”

“And we are going there.”

“Oh! I dinna ken. It’s cold, and the ship mayna sail, and we might have to wait. I’m not going.”

“Did he say that to you? Yes, you are going. Do you mean that you would let him be disappointed at the very last, and him taking it for a sign?”

“But the mist is rising, and it’s all nonsense—and he winna see.”

“Where is your scarlet shawl? Did you no’ bring it?”

“Oh! yes. I brought it fast enough,” said May, laughing and lifting her dress, under which the shawl was fastened. “As we were going to Auntie Jean’s I thought it as well to keep it out of sight. But, Jean, it is wet and cold, and he was only half in earnest.”

“How could he speak out all that he wanted to say, kenning my father! But you must go.”

“Go yourself. He’ll never ken the difference.”

“No, he’ll never ken the difference. But when he comes home—what will you say to him then? And besides it was your being there that was to be the sign of his safe coming home—and—his getting his heart’s wish. You are coming.”

They turned their steps northward, in the direction of a high ledge of rocks, that half a mile above the harbour jutted out into the sea. It was this point both had been thinking of when they left home, for they well knew that the young ladies from Saughleas could not, on such a day, go to loiter on the pier with all the town, just to see a whaling ship set sail for northern seas. If the day had been fine, they might have gone with a chance companion or two to see what was to be seen, and to while away an hour. Even in the wind and sleet Jean might have gone with her father, if the ship had not been the “John Seaton,” or if Willie Calderwood had not been on board. But as it was, she could not even name such a thing to her father. He would have been angry, and it would have done no good.

So it was to the rocks above the Tangle Stanes they must go. If the day had been fine, there would have been other folk there, and many a signal would have been given as the ship went by. But they had the high desolate rocks to themselves when they had clambered up at last, and it was all they could do to keep their footing upon it, for the wind which had met them so fiercely even on the level, raged here with tenfold violence.

And there was no sign of the ship. There was nothing but great wild waves rising and falling as far as they could see, and masses of white foam here and there, where they broke themselves on half hidden rocks beneath. There was no sign of life except that now and then a solitary sea-gull shrieked sadly through the blast.

“Eh! but it’s dreary and cold,” said May with a shudder.

“Go down to yon sheltered nook and bide there till I tell you that she is coming.”

“But it’s a’ nonsense, Jean. She mayna come at all, as auntie said.”

“Since we’re here, we’ll bide a while:” So May went down to the sheltered nook, and wrapping her cloak about her, she took from her pocket a biscuit or two with which she had providently supplied herself, and prepared to wait with what patience she could till her sister chose to go. And Jean, unable to stand still in the bitter wind, struggled up and down the narrow limits of the ledge,—not thinking—hardly feeling—for she needed all her power to keep her footing on the slippery rock—only waiting for the ship.

She came in sight at last, but, driven by the wind, as soon as she was beyond the harbour bar, she drifted so far to the eastward, that it was doubtful whether any signal from those on shore could be seen on board.

“Are you coming, May? Haste you,” cried Jean, and while her sister lingered, she let the long shawl float its full length on the wind. At the moment the clouds parted, and a sudden gleam of sunshine lighted the rock and the girlish figure, and the waving signal which she held. It was but for a moment. Before May had clambered to her side, the clouds met again, and dimness and dreariness were over all.

“Take it, May. It is you he is thinking of now when he sees it. He must have seen it when the sun shone out. Take it, and hold it fast.”

“It is easy said, hold it fast, and it’s all nonsense,” said May pettishly, and from her uncertain fingers the wind caught the scarlet signal, and carried it out to sea.

“My shawl!” gasped May. “My bonny scarlet shawl?”

“It’s an ill omen, I doubt,” said Jean in a whisper. “But never mind the shawl; you shall have my bonny blue one instead. And now we may go home.”

“It is all folly from first to last,” said May. “And what I am to say about my shawl, I canna tell.”

“Say nothing. Who has a right to ask? And, May, I think I’ll walk home—to warm myself, for I am cold.” She looked cold and could not keep herself from trembling. “Go back to Auntie Jean’s. My father will be sure to seek us there, and I’ll be home before you.”

May was not sure of the wisdom of consenting to meet her father without her sister, lest he might ask any questions as to how they had spent the afternoon. But hoping that she might get to her aunt’s house before him, she hurried away, scarcely remembering till she sat beside her aunt’s pleasant fire, that she had left her sister standing there on the desolate wind-swept height.

And there she stood while the ship went slowly on its northern way, “carrying her life with it,” she said to herself, in vague wonder at the utter faintness of heart, and weariness of body which had fallen upon her.

“What has come to me?” she muttered. “What is Willie Calderwood to me, but a friend? He has ay been that, and ay will be, and if he is more to my bonny May—why that makes him more to me—and not less, surely. And friends must part. There is many a sair heart in Portie the night—and folk man just thole whatever is sent, and say nothing. And oh! if Geordie would but come home?”

Again the clouds parted, and a gleam of sunshine touched the water, giving her one more glimpse of the white sails of the ship before she went down to the north, and then there was but “the fearsome waves of the sea,” from which she could scarcely turn her dazed eyes. But she had to take her way down the steep rocks, and through the wet fields, the near way home. She lingered and walked wearily, and it was growing dark when she went in at the gate.

“Is it you, Miss Dawson?” said a voice in the darkness. “Has any thing happened? Are ye your lane?”

“Nothing has happened. I preferred to walk. Are they not come yet?”

“Nobody has come yet, Miss Dawson, and there has been nobody here but Robbie Saugster, wantin’ a book that you promised him—or Miss May maybe it was,” said Phemie. “You were hardly awa’ ere he was here, and he said he’d come back the morn.”

Jean sat down wearily in the hall.

“I am wet and tired,” said she.

“I was sure you would be that,” said Phemie, “and I made a bit fire in your ain room, and I’ll bring warm water and bathe your feet in a jiffy. No wonder you are tired.”

“That was well done. They cannot be long now in coming. I’ll go and make myself ready, and have the tea made at once.”

Phemie was up with the warm water almost as soon as her mistress.

“Eh! Miss Dawson, but you are white and spent looking. It’s the heat, I dare say, after being in the cold.”

She knelt and took off her shoes and stockings, and bathed her weary feet with kindly care, and Jean let her do as she would, saying nothing for a while.

“I’m better now. Yes, it must have been coming into the warm room after the cold of the afternoon. Thank you, Phemie, that is comfortable. I will be down in a minute now.”

She was sitting behind the urn with a book in her hand when her father came in.

“You are late, papa.”

“Yes—too late—too late,” said he, and then he sat down by the fire without taking off his greatcoat or the heavy plaid which was on his shoulders above it.

“Something has happened,” said Jean to herself. But she knew he would not in his present mood answer her questions. She rose and took the plaid and his hat, and carried them away. Then she helped him to take off his coat. He did not resist her, but he did not speak, and by the time he was seated at the table, May came down. Her sister met her at the door, asking softly,—

“What has happened to my father?”

“Has any thing happened? I do not know. I waited at auntie’s till I was weary, and then I went to Jamieson’s, and waited there. He came at last, but he has not opened his lips all the way home.”

And he did not open his lips during the meal. He ate and drank as usual, and as usual took his notebook from his pocket when he was done, and turned the leaves and wrote a word or two. He was scarcely more silent than was his wont, but there was a look on his face that Jean had seen only once or twice upon it—a look at once grieved and angry, of which she had learned to be afraid. She longed to ask him if any new trouble had befallen him, but she did not dare to ask, and she sat in silence with her work in her hands till Phemie appeared at the door.

“If you please, Miss Dawson, will you speak here a minute. It’s Robbie Saugster again.”

Jean rose and went out of the room, conscious that her father’s eye followed her, with something of suspicion in its glance. She went into the room where her father’s books and papers were kept, and in a minute Phemie ushered in a boy who looked as though he had had the benefit of all the wind and the rain that had fallen through the day. He waited till Phemie had shut the door, and then he said:

“It is this I was bidden give you, Miss Jean. I cam’ afore, and then I looked for ye on the pier and a’ way, but I couldna see ye, and I doubt it’s ower late for an answer new.”

He offered her a soiled and crumpled note, which she read at a glance and put in her pocket.

“What is this about a book that I promised you, Robbie?” she asked.

“Oh! ay, Miss Dawson. I had to tell Phemie something. And I’ll be glad o’ an orra book or two, as I’m goin’ to the school—a count-book or maybe a Latin grammar. But I’ll come back for it again.”

“Wait a minute, Robbie,” said Jean. She went into the parlour again where her father was sitting.

“May, what is this about a book for Robbie Saugster? Did you promise him one? He says he is going to the school.”

“A book? I dinna mind. Maybe I did. What kind of a book was it? I canna look it out to-night, I am too tired.”

The father’s eyes had gone from one to the other with eager scrutiny.

“There are old school books enough, and I’ll tell him that you’ll look them out to-morrow.”

“You should have had them ready, no’ to keep the laddie coming back again,” said her father sharply.

“I didna mind about it, and I dare say Jean promised as well as me,” she answered pettishly.

“Mind next time then; and, Jean, tell Phemie to give the laddie his supper before he goes home.”

“Yes, papa,” said Jean as she shut the door.

“Something has happened and he was watching. It is about poor Geordie, and I’m not sure whether I should tell him or not I must think about it first.”

Robbie got his supper, and the promise of the books, and then Jean came in and sat down with her work at her father’s side, working quietly and busily as usual, but all the time putting a strong restraint upon her thoughts lest she should betray herself unawares by look or sign. May, weary with the exertion of the afternoon, by and by fell asleep in her chair.

“Bid them come ben to worship, and let the lassie go to her bed,” said her father.

When worship was over, Jean folded her work, saying she was weary too. “Unless you may want any thing, papa,” said she turning before she reached the door.

He looked at her a moment as if in doubt, and then he said shortly, “I want nothing,” and Jean went away to let herself think over it all.

“No answer!” said she as she took the note from her pocket again. A leaf torn from an account-book it seemed to be. She spread it before her on the table; there were only a few words written on it.

“Miss Dawson,—

“If it is possible, come to the pier head before the ‘John Seaton’ sails. Maybe the sight of you will do what no persuasion of mine can do. But no ill shall come to Geordie that I can keep from him. Come at all risks.

“Your humble servant,—

“W.C.”

“And I might have been there, if I had but known. What will he think of me? And can it be that Geordie has sailed on the ‘John Seaton’? No wonder that my heart grew sick as the ship went out of sight. And oh how can I ever tell my father?”

Chapter Four.

Saughleas.

Saughleas with the June sunshine felling on it was a very different place from Saughleas under the “drip, drip” of winter rain and sleet, with the wind moaning or roaring through the bare boughs of its sheltering beeches.

The house was plain and heavy looking. It stood too near the road for so large a house, it was said, and it was so high that it made all the trees—except the few great beeches—look smaller than they would have looked elsewhere. But it was built of the cheerful looking reddish granite of the neighbourhood, and with its green adornment of honeysuckle and climbing roses and its low French windows opening on the little terrace above the lawn, it looked in summer-time a handsome and homelike dwelling.

There were many trees about it—fruit trees, elms, and poplars, Norway spruces, and Scotch firs; but most of them had been planted within the last fifteen years, and trees on this east coast—like the children in the song—“take long to grow.” The beeches, seven in number, were both old and beautiful—so beautiful and so stately amid the dwarfs around them that they, and not the wavering line of Saughs or willows that followed the margin of the burn running through the long low fields, it was sometimes said, should have given a name to the place.

There was a narrow belt of wood behind the house which had been planted long ago, and even in it the trees were not very large. But it was a very pretty spot, a real wood, where up through the undisturbed dead leaves of autumn came snowdrops and violets and primroses in the spring. Between this wood and the house was a field of grass, which was not cut smoothly every day or two like the lawn in front, but was allowed to grow tall and strong till the right time came to cut it down for hay. Through this field a gravelled walk led down to “The Well”; a clear, unfailing spring at the edge of the wood, and to a moss-covered stone seat beside it.

Beyond this a narrower path led through the grass and the last year’s dead leaves into the heart of the wood, where, in a circular space, large enough to let the sunlight in though the trees had been higher, lay “Mary Keith, beloved and honoured wife of George Dawson,” with her little children at her side. Here the turf was soft and green, but there was no adornment of shrub or flower on the grave or near it, only a simple headstone of grey granite and near it a turf seat, over which the slender boughs of a “weeping birch” hung sadly down.

Beyond the wood were the low fields through which the Saugh burn ran. Parks they were called, but they were just long grassy fields, with rough stone walls round them, and cows and sheep feeding in them. There was no “Park,” in the grand sense of the term, about Saughleas as yet. There was no space for one without appropriating some of the best fields from the leased farms, and if things had gone right with him, that might have been done in time, Mr Dawson sometimes said to himself with a sigh.

But things had not gone right with him of late. Any thing but that—if one might judge from the look of care and pain, that had become almost habitual to him now.

“George, man, is it worth your while to wear your life away gathering gear that ye dinna need, when ye might be enjoying what ye have in this bonny place?”

“It is a bonny place,” was all he said in reply.

They were sitting, not on the lawn, but on the other side of the drive, where the sunshine was softened by the fluttering beech leaves overhead. At least, Miss Jean was sitting there. Her brother was “daundering” up and down the walk with his hands clasped behind him, as his way was, lingering a little, now at the gate and now at his sister’s side. He had forgotten her for the moment, as he stood looking out toward the distant sea, and the look which his daughter had come to know well, but which his sister was seldom suffered to see, came to his face and rested on it still when he turned along the walk again. And so he spoke.

“It is a bonny place,” he answered, and then he walked away. But though he let his eyes wander over the gardens and the wood, and the fields beyond, there came to his face no glad look of possession or self-gratulation, and his head drooped lower and his step lagged as he drew near her again. He stood silent at her side, as though he expected her to say more, but she said nothing.

“It is a bonny place,” said he again, “though it has given me but little pleasure as yet, and whiles I think that I am near done with it—and—there’s none to come after me.”

“George, man! that’s an ill thing to say.”

“But it’s true for a’ that God knows I was thinking little of myself when I put the winnings of my whole life into the land. And what is likely to come of it? Ye might weel say, Jean, that God’s blessing hasna been upon it.”

“No, I would never say that.”

He took his way down the walk again, and went quite round the broad lawn, and she had time for a good many troubled thoughts before he came back.

“I doubt ye’re overworking yourself, George,” said she. She put out her hand to draw forward a garden chair that stood beyond her, and he did not refuse it, as she was afraid he might, but sat down beside her. “Where are the girls?” asked he. “They are busy up the stair—about May’s dress, I think. But there is nothing to hinder them coming, if ye’re wanting them.”

“No. I’m no’ wanting them. I have something to say to you, and I shall find no better time. I am going to make a new will.”

“Well?”

“I have waited long, but if any thing were to happen to me, there would be endless trouble—if—unless—” He paused a moment and then added, “I know not well what to do.”

“Need ye do any thing at once?”

“I think I should. Life is uncertain, though mine may be no more so than that of other men. But no man should put off settling his affairs, for the sake of those that are to come after him. I wish to do justly, but I will not divide the land, and I will not burden it.”

“No, it wouldna be weel to divide the land nor to burden it,” said Miss Jean.

There was a long silence and then Mr Dawson said gravely, felling into the Scottish tongue as he and the rest of them were apt to do when much moved.

“Gin ony stranger were to go through Portie the day and speir at ane and anither up and doon the street, as to who had been the successful man o’ these pairts for the last five and twenty years or mair, there’s little doubt whose name would be given them. And yet—my life looks and feels to me the day—awfully like a failure.”

The shock which his unexpected words gave his sister was not all pain. She had thought him only too well content with his life and with what he had done in it. He was going down the hill now. It was well that he should acknowledge—that he should even be made sharply to feel, that all that he had—though it were ten times more—was not enough for a portion. But the bitter sadness of his look smote her painfully.

“God help him!” she said in her heart, but to him she said nothing. He did not take her silence for want of sympathy. He was too well acquainted with her ways for that, and in a little he added,—

“Like other folk I have heard o’, I have gotten my wish, but all that made it worth the having has been taken from me. Gin she had lived—”

His sister did not speak. She just laid her hand on his for a moment, and looked at him with grave, wet eyes.

“If she had lived,” he went on, not yielding to the weakness that had come upon, him, “if she had lived, the rest might have been hindered.”

“God knows,” said Miss Jean softly, taking up her knitting again.

“Ay, He knows, but I dinna seem to be able to tak’ the good o’ that that some folk do. But good or no good, I man submit—like the lave.”

“Here are the bairns,” said Miss Jean softly as the two sisters came through one of the open windows to the terrace about the lawn—“a sight worth seeing” the father in the midst of his painful thoughts acknowledged. They lingered a moment in the terrace raised a little above the lawn, the one stooping over a bonny bush of wee Scotch roses at her feet, the other standing on tiptoe trying to entangle a wandering spray of honeysuckle that it might find support. The eyes of father and aunt could not but rest on them with pleasure.

“I wonder that I ever could have thought them so much alike,” said their father, in a little.

“They’re like and they’re no’ like,” said Miss Jean.

They were even less alike than they had been that day when they had startled her coming in on her out of the storm. Their dress had something to do with it doubtless. May wore something white and fluffy, with frills and flounces and blue ribbons, and her brown curls were bound back by a snood of blue. She was in her simple finery as fair and sweet a picture of a young maiden as one could wish to see.

Jean was different. Her dress was made of some dim stuff that looked in the distance like brown holland. A seafaring friend of her father’s had brought it to her from India, her aunt remembered, and it came into her mind that perhaps there had not been enough of it, to make the frills and flounces, that young people were so pleased with nowadays. It was severely simple in contrast with her sister’s, and her hair was gathered in one heavy braid at the back of her head. She had not her sister’s fair and smiling loveliness, but there was something in her face that went far beyond it, her aunt thought, as she watched them standing there looking over the lawn to some one approaching along the road. Her face was bright and her air cheerful enough at the moment, but for all that there was a look of thoughtfulness and gravity upon it—a silent look—which reminded her father of his sister’s look at her age. Only she was more beautiful. She was like a young princess, he thought, in his pride in her.

“Is it her gown?” asked he; “or is it the way that Jean puts her hair? What has ’come o’ a’ her curls this while back?”

The question was not to be answered. The opening of a little gate at the side of the lawn made them turn, and then Mr Dawson rose to greet a stranger who was coming up the walk. He was not quite a stranger to him. He knew his name and that he was a visitor at Blackford House, a gentleman’s seat seven miles away. It was at this gentleman the girls had been looking, and at the lady who was in the carriage with him, as they passed slowly along the highway.

He was a tall fair man—young and good looking—very handsome indeed. He was a little too much inclined to stoutness perhaps, and rather languid in his movements, it might have been thought, as he came up the walk; but no fault could be found with his graceful and friendly greeting.

It was Miss Jean Dawson that he wished to see. It had been suggested to his sister, Mrs Eastwood, that Miss Dawson would be able to tell her what she wished to hear of a poor woman in whom she took an interest. She had been at Miss Dawson’s house in Portie, and hearing she was at Saughleas, had called on her way to Blackford, to save another journey. She was in her carriage at the gate, and could Miss Dawson send her a message? Or perhaps—

The gate was hidden by a clump of firs. Miss Jean gave a glance in that direction and then laid her hand on her staff. Then she beckoned to her nieces who were still on the terrace. Jean came quickly toward her, and May followed more slowly. It was worth a body’s while, Phemie told her fellow servants afterwards, just to see the way the gentleman took off his hat and bowed as Miss Dawson came near. Phemie saw it all from her young lady’s window upstairs, and she would have liked well to hear also.

“It is about Mrs Cairnie, Jean, my dear. Ye ken her daughter Annie went south last year, and her mistress promised to see her mother, when she came north, and would like to hear o’ her. I might maybe get to the gate with your help?”

“Certainly not. You are not able to walk so far. If a message will not do, it must wait.”

Miss Jean shook her head with a slight smile. She had seen “Miss Dawson’s grand air” before, and so had May, but her father looked at her amazed. It was not her words that startled him so much as her manner. She looked at the stranger who stood with his hat in his hand, as though he were at an immense distance from her. But in a minute she added more gently:

“I will take a message, aunt, if you wish. Or, I could—”

“Pray do not think of such a thing. I could not think of troubling you,” said the young man confusedly.

“Or I could write a note,” said the young lady taking no notice.

“Or the lady might drive into the place. She need not leave her carriage,” said Mr Dawson, not quite pleased at his daughter’s manner.

“Certainly that will be much the best way,” said the stranger, bowing to Miss Jean and the young ladies.

Miss Jean the elder was generally sparing of words of reproof, and even of words of advice, unless advice was asked, and she said nothing. But May exclaimed,—

“You might have been civil to him at least, Jeannie. We have not so many gentlemen coming to see us.”

“To see us! It was Auntie Jean he came to see—on an errand from his sister. And I think it was a piece of impertinence on his part to expect Miss Jean Dawson to go at his bidding—and you so lame, auntie,” added Jean as she saw her aunt’s face.

“He couldna ken that, and I’m no’ sure that he did expect me to go to the gate. And I’m no’ feared for my ain dignity, Jean lassie, and I dinna think ye need be feared for it either.”

“Dignity!” exclaimed May. “Why, he is one of the fine folk that are staying at Blackford House.”

“And that is the very reason,” said Jean hotly—“the very reason that I—”

“It’s but a poor reason,” said Miss Jean.

But no more could be added, for the carriage was passing round the drive toward the spot where Miss Jean was sitting. The lady was driving her own ponies, and very nice she looked in her fresh muslins and simple straw hat. She was not very young, judging from her lace, which was thin and rather dark, but she had a youthful air, and a sweet smile, and seemed altogether a pleasing person. Even Jean could find no fault with her manner, as she addressed her aunt. There was respect, even deference, in every tone of her voice, and in every bend of her graceful head.

There was not very much to be said between them however. Miss Jean told the lady where Mrs Cairnie lived. Any body in Portie could have told her that. Then there was something said about the poor old lady’s wants and ways, and the chief thing was that the daughter had sent some money and other things, which were to be left in Miss Jean Dawson’s hands, for a reason which the lady could not explain. But explanation was unnecessary, for Miss Jean knew more of poor Tibby Cairnie’s troubles and temptations than even her own daughter did.

It was all arranged easily enough, but still the lady seemed in no hurry to go. She could hardly have gone at once, for Mr Dawson had taken Captain Harefield round among the trees, and they were out of sight at the moment May admired the ponies, and Jean stood with her hand on her aunt’s chair looking straight before her.

“A striking face and graceful figure, and a wonderfully intelligent look as well,” thought Mrs Eastwood, and then in a pretty friendly way she seemed to include the silent girl in the talk she had been making with Miss Jean about the trees, and the views, and the fine weather they had had of late; and when Miss Jean became silent, as she generally did unless she had something to say that needed to be heard, Jean took her part in the conversation and did it well.

When the gentlemen returned, Mrs Eastwood still seemed in no haste to go. A new idea had seized her. Would Miss Dawson kindly go with her some morning soon to see Mrs Cairnie? It would be a pleasure to a faithful servant, if she could tell her on her return that she had seen her old mother; and if Miss Dawson could make it convenient to go with her, she would call some morning soon, and drive her to Portie.

No serious objection could be made to this, though in her heart Miss Jean doubted whether the absent Annie would care much to have the lady see her old mother, who was not always in a state fit for the eyes of “gentlefolk.” However a day was set, and other little matters agreed upon, and then with many pleased looks and polite hopes that they might meet again, their visitors went away.

That night when they were sitting alone in the long gloaming, the sisters being not at home, Mr Dawson suddenly returned to the discussion of the subject which had been touched on in the garden.

“I couldna divide the land, but there is enough of money and other property to do fair justice to the other, and I think the land should go to Jean.”

His sister said nothing.

“She is the eldest, and the strongest in every way. If she were to give her mind to it, she might, in time, hold her own in the countryside with the best of them.”

He was silent for a minute.

“And she might many, and get help in that way. And her son would have the place. And he might take my name, which is an honest one at least.”

“Ye’re takin’ a lang look,” said Miss Jean at last.

He gave an uncertain laugh.

“Oh! weel! That’s atween you and me, ye ken. It might be. A lad like him that was here the day, for instance—a gentleman by birth and breeding. He is a poor man, as poverty looks to the like of him, a two or three hunder pounds or so a year. It would be wealth to most folk, but it’s poverty to the like o’ him. But if it should so happen—and I were to live another ten years—I might satisfy even the like o’ him.”

There was much which Miss Jean might have said to all this, which fell like the vainest folly on her ears, but she said nothing.

“And as for my Jean!—she needs to see the world and society, and all that, doubtless, but if there’s many o’ the fine London ladies that will hold a candle to her as far as looks go—it’s mair than I think. She might stand before the queen herself with any of them.”

And still Miss Jean said never a word.

“It might very well be, and I might live to see it. There’s more land to be had too, if I’m willing to pay the price for it—and with this in view I might care to do it. I’ll do nothing in haste.”

He seemed to be speaking to himself, rather than to her.

“I’ll do nothing in haste,” he repeated. “But I could do it, and there would be some good in life—if this thing could be.”

“Are ye forgetting that ye ha’e a son somewhere in the world?” said his sister gravely.

Mr Dawson uttered a sound in which pain and impatience seemed to mingle.

“Have I? It is hardly to be hoped. And if he is—living—it is hardly such a life as would fit him to take his place where—he might have been. I think, Jean, it might be as weel to act as if I had no living son.”

“But yet he may be living, and he may come home.” Mr Dawson rose suddenly and went and leaned against the darkening window.

“No, Jean, if he had ever been coming home, he would have come ere now. He was seen in Portie not three months since, and he never came near me. Ye think I was hard on him; but I wasna so hard as all that.”

“Who saw him?” asked his sister greatly startled. “He was seen by more than one, though he was little like himself, if I can judge from what I heard.”

“But he is living, George. There’s comfort in that.”

“If I had heard that he was living on the other side of the world, I might have taken comfort from it. But that he should have been here, and never came home—there is little comfort in that.”

“But he is living and he’ll come home to you yet. Do you think his mother’s son will be left to go astray beyond homecoming? He’ll come home again.”

“Many a son of a good mother has gone down to death—And that he should have come so near her grave, without coming nearer! I would almost sooner know him to be dead than to know that of him. And when I mind—”

That was the last word spoken. Mr Dawson rose and went out into the faint light of the summer night, and though his sister sat long waiting for him after the girls had come in and had gone to bed, she saw no more of him that night.

Chapter Five.

A New Acquaintance.

Mr Dawson was just as usual the next morning. He was never so silent, nor in such haste to get through breakfast and away to the town when his sister was in the house, for he took pleasure in her company, and never failed in the most respectful courtesy toward her when she was under his roof—or indeed elsewhere. She saw traces of last night’s trouble in his face, but it was not so evident as to be noticed by his daughters.

Indeed he seemed to them to be more interested than usual in the amusing discussion into which they fell concerning their yesterday’s pleasure. They had been at a garden party given by Mrs Petrie, the wife of their father’s partner in the bank, and had enjoyed it, and May especially had much to say about it.