Chapter Twenty Four.
Another Home.
“Weel! weel! If the marriage is wi’ auld Mr Dawson’s free consent, then the Ethiopian can change his skin, and that would be makin’ the Bible out nae true. It’s little ye ken! He’s nae a man to change like that.”
It was Mrs Cairnie who spoke, sitting at her daughter’s door, with her crutch at her side. Young Mrs Saugster was sitting inside with her baby on her lap, and her mother-in-law and Maggie, busy with her seam, were with her.
“But Mr Dawson went to the marriage himself, and he wouldna ha’e gone but o’ his ain free will,” said Maggie as no one else answered.
“There’s nae sayin’. Young George has the tow in his ain hand. It’s as he says now, I doubt, about maist things.”
“But he could hardly have wished the auld man to go against his will. And indeed Mr Dawson gets the credit o’ makin’ the marriage himsel’, though that’s likely going beyond the truth,” said old Mrs Saugster. “But what I wonder at is Mrs Calderwood. She is a quait woman, but she is as stiff in her way, and as proud as ever Mr Dawson was; and though she said little at the time, she carried a sair heart and angry, for many a day after she lost her Elsie.”
“Folk change,” said her daughter-in-law. “Ay. And it’s wonderfu’ what folk can outlive.”
“Mrs Calderwood!” repeated Mrs Cairnie. “What about her! It’s a grand marriage for the like o’ her dochter, no’ to say that she has gotten her triumph ower auld George at last. It’s weel to be her.”
“It is all like a tale in a book. Somebody should make a ballad about it,” said Maggie. “It’s no’ often that we see a thing comin’ to the right end, as this ha’e done.”
“The end hasna come yet,” said Mrs Cairnie. “And it’s no’ that richt for some folk. Look at young Miss Jean. She has her ain thoughts, and they are no’ o’ the pleasantest, or her lace doesna tell the truth. And why didna she go to the marriage wi’ the lave?”
“Oh! it wasna as if it had been a fine wedding. It was to be very quiet. And Miss Dawson has Mrs Manners’ boys at Saughleas. She couldna weel leave them, nor her aunt.”
“Weel, maybe no’. But it canna please her to think o’ leaving Saughleas, and letting Marion Calderwood reign in her stead. It’ll come to that, though it seems the young folk are goin’ to the High-street in the mean time.”
“Weel, Miss Dawson may be in a home o’ her ain by that time,” said old Mrs Saugster. “And whether or no’, she’s no’ the first sister in the countryside who has had to give way before a brother’s wife.”
“Mother! Mrs Cairnie! to say such like things about Miss Dawson! Ye ken little about her, if ye think she would grudge to do what is right.”
Maggie, red and angry, looked from one to the other as if she would have liked to say more. Her mother laughed. She knew Maggie’s admiration for young Miss Jean of old, but Mrs Cairnie said sourly,—
“It’s weel seen that ye belong to the rising generation. In my day lassies werena in the way o’ takin’ the words out o’ their mother’s mouth, to say naething o’ folk four times their age. As for young Miss Jean, she’s liker ither folk than ye think.”
“Whisht, mother. See yonder is Miss Dawson coming down the street.”
“Ay, she’ll be on her way to the house in the High-street, though why I should be bidden whisht at the sight o’ her, I dinna ken. And there’s one thing sure. Naebody has seen auld George on his way to the house yet. That doesna look as gin he were weel pleased.”
“Eh, woman! Ha’e ye forgotten? It was there he took Mary Keith a bride. Let him be ever so weel pleased, it will give him a sair heart to go there again.”
There was a slight pause in preparation for Miss Dawson’s greeting, but before she came near them, she was joined by her father and both passed on with only a word.
“He’s hame again. And I canna say I think he looks ower weel pleased,” said Mrs Cairnie.
“It is of Mary Keith he is thinking,” said her friend. “He has a feelin’ heart for a’ sae down as he looks. I doubt he has an ill half hour before him.”
In the mean time Jean and her father had reached the gate which opened into the garden of the High-street house. It was a large and well-built house, higher and with wider windows than most of the houses in Portie, and on the whole it was a suitable place of abode for a young man of George’s means and station. There was only a strip of green between it and the street, but behind it was a large walled garden into which Mr Dawson had never been since he left it for Saughleas long ago. Indeed he had hardly seen the house since the death of his wife. He never came to the town over the fields as the young people were in the way of doing, and he always turned into the High-street from the turnpike road at a lower point than this.
“Papa,” said Jean, arresting her hand which held the old-fashioned knocker of the door, “well go home to-night and come over in the morning. You are tired.”
“No, no. We’ll get it ower to-night,” said her father in a voice which he made gruff in trying to make it steady.
Jean followed the servant into the kitchen and lingered there a while, and Mr Dawson went alone into the once familiar rooms, and not a word of sorrow or sympathy was spoken between them, though the daughter’s heart ached for the pain which she knew was throbbing at the heart of her father. He was looking from the window over the garden to the sea, and he did not turn as Jean came in, so she did not speak, but went here and there giving a touch to the things over the arrangement of which she had spent time and taken pleasure during the last few weeks.
“You must have made yourself busy this while, Jean,” said her father coming forward at last. “And I must say you have done well. It is all that can be desired, I would think. There are some things coming from London, however.”
“Does it not look nice? George had his say about it all. I only helped. I think Marion will be pleased.”
“But they should have been guided by me, and come straight to Saughleas. That would have been the best way.”
“I’m no’ so sure. I think it was natural and right that George should wish to be the head of his own house. No, papa. You are master at Saughleas and ought to be, and I am mistress. Oh! yes, we would both have given up willingly enough, but then neither George nor Marion would have willingly taken our places. But never mind, papa. It will all come in time, and sooner than you think. And I like to think of George bringing his bride to the very house where you brought mamma.”
It was a rare thing for Jean to speak her mother’s name to her father. It came now with a smile, but with a rush of tears also, which surprised herself quite as much as they surprised her father, and she turned away to hide them. It was her father’s loss she was thinking of rather than her own.
“Ay, my lassie! May they be as blessed here as we were,” said her father.
And so the first look of his once happy home was gotten over with no more tender words between them, and they went slowly home together, through the fields this time.
Many things had wrought toward the change which Mrs Cairnie and other folk as well saw in Mr Dawson about this time. The new life which George was making honourable among his fellow townsmen, the firm stand he took on the side of right in all matters where his influence could be brought to bear, the light hold that wealth, or the winning of it for its own sake, had ever had upon him, had all by slow degrees told on the old man’s opinions and feelings. But as to his wish for his son’s marriage with Marion Calderwood, it was Marion herself who had brought that about.
He had noticed her, and had liked her frank, fearless ways before she left Portie, and the sight-seeing together in London, and more still, the few quiet days which she had spent with Miss Jean at Saughleas, won him quite. It was going beyond the truth, as Mrs Saugster had said, to declare that the old man had made the marriage, though it is doubtful whether it would have come about so soon, or whether it would have come about at all, if it had not been for a question or two that he had put to his sister as he sat once in the gloaming in her house.
Then there was a softly spoken word or two between Miss Jean and her nephew, and then George went straight to his father.
“Father, I am going to ask Marion Calderwood to be my wife, if you will give your consent.”
It would not have been like Mr Dawson if he had shown at the first word the pleasure with which he heard it.
“You are of age now, George, and your ain man. I have no right to hinder you.”
“Father,” said George, after a moment’s silence, “I shall think you have not forgiven the past, if you say the like of that.”
The old man’s hand was raised to shade his eyes; he could not quite trust his face to hide his feelings now, but he said in a voice which he tried to make indifferent,—
“I suppose it is to be her or nobody. Is that what you would say to me?”
George made no answer to this.
“I shall never ask her without your full and free consent.”
Mr Dawson’s hand fell and he turned sharply upon him. “And what about her feelings, if that is to be the way?”
“I have never given her a word or a look that a brother might not give to a sister. But I cannot but hope—” added George with a sudden light in his eye, and a rush of boyish colour to his face. “And I thought you liked Marion, father?”
“Like her?” said his father rising. “George, man, go in God’s name and bring her home. She shall be to me like my own daughter. And the sooner the better.”
So George went to London and won his bride—“too easily,” her mother said. Indeed George had more trouble to win the mother than the daughter. It was to the mother he went first.
As for her, unless she could blot out altogether the remembrance of the sorrow and the hard thoughts of all the past, how could she consent to give her child to him?
“And would it not be well to blot them out?” said George.
“Ay, if it could be done. But as for me—I canna forget my Elsie—”
“And do I forget Elsie? when Marion looks at me with Elsie’s eyes and speaks to me with her voice, and—”
“And will that content my Marion, think ye? George, Marion is not just what her sister was. She is of a deeper nature, and is a stronger woman in every way. She is worthy of being loved for her own sake, and nothing less would content her, though she might think it for a while. And oh! George, I cannot bear the thought of having her free heart and her happy life disturbed. To think that she must go through all that!” said the widow with a sigh.
“Dear mother,” said George—it was not the first time he had called her so—and he took her unwilling hand between his own as he spoke, “she shall not be disturbed, unless you give me leave to speak; I will go away again without a word. I will not even see her for a while. I cannot promise to give up the thought of her altogether, but I will go away now.”
But Mrs Calderwood said,—
“No, George. You must see her since you are here, though you must not speak to her of this. She is no longer a child, and I fear I did an unwise thing in trying to keep you out of her sight so long. It kept you in her mind all the more—not you, but a lad of her own fancy with your name. Miss Jean ay said it would be far better to let things take their course, and so it might have been.”
“And do you mean that you kept us from meeting of your own will?”
“Dinna look at me in that way, George. What could I do? You were both young, and she ay made a hero of you. And there was your father. And I wouldna have my bairn’s heart troubled. Not that I mean that she cares for you, as she ought not—”
“Dear mother, let me ask her.”
Mrs Calderwood made a sudden impatient movement. She loved the young man dearly. And her own son, who to her proud thought was “a man among men,” was scarcely dearer. He was a son in all but the name. She loved him, and she believed in him; and even to herself, as she looked at his face, it seemed a foolish and a wrong thing to send him away.
But then it had always been in her thought that these two must never come together in this way, because of her dead Elsie, and because of the hard old man’s angry scorn, which, though she had forgiven him, she could not forget. She could not change easily. It was not her nature. And she could not bear that her Marion’s heart should be disturbed from its maiden peace. She moved about the room uncertain what she ought to say or do, and utterly impatient of her own hesitation. When she sat down again George came and stood before her.
“Mrs Calderwood, my father gave me God speed, and bade me bring her home.”
“Oh! your father,” cried Mrs Calderwood with sudden anger. “Your father has ay gotten his ain will for good or for ill, all his life long. And now to think—”
“His last words were—‘She shall be to me as my own daughter.’”
Mrs Calderwood turned her face away.
“He loves her dearly,” said George softly.
Still she did not speak.
“And, mother,—turn your face to me,—I love her dearly.”
She turned then, and at the sight of his moved face her eyes overflowed with tears.
“Oh! George! you are very dear to me, but my Marion is all I have—”
What more she might have said, he never knew, for the door opened, and Marion came softly in with a letter in her hand. Her mother rose, but she did not move away from George, as was her first impulse, nor did she try to hide her tears. It would have been no use, for they were falling like rain over her face. Marion stood still at the door, looking at them with wonder and a little fear.
George went to her, and taking her hand led her to her mother. He was very pale and his lips trembled as he said,—
“Mother, will you let me speak to her now?”
What she might have answered she could not tell. She dropped into her seat with a little cry, and in a moment Marion was kneeling before her, and then so was George; and, of course, there was only one way in which it could end.
Mrs Calderwood said afterwards that Marion had let herself be too easily won. Marion laughed when she said this.
“I think, mother, I was won long before that day,” said she.
But at the moment the mother could only give her consent. In a little, when George had taken his wife, that was to be, to the other end of the room, Mrs Calderwood picked up the letter which Marion had let fall, and opened it mechanically, letting her eye fall on the written words while her thoughts were elsewhere. But before she had read many words she uttered an exclamation and hastily went out of the room.
Her pride was to be spared at any rate. Nobody had supposed that she would be too easily won. The letter was from Mr Dawson; and by rights she ought to have had it before George came, for it was to bespeak her good word for him that he had written.
It was just, “Let by-ganes be by-ganes. Give your daughter to my son, and she shall be welcomed among us with all the love and honour of which she is worthy—and more cannot be said than that.”
Mrs Calderwood read it and read it again, and her wonder grew. Changed! Surely if ever a man was changed, George Dawson must be to write to her such a letter as that. But when she showed it to her daughter, Marion was only surprised at her amazement. All these kind words did not seem strange to her. She had never heard any but kind words from him.
“I began to think he liked me when I was staying with Mrs Manners, and I was sure of it at Saughleas—only afterwards—and even then—” said Marion not very coherently. But she did not explain her meaning more clearly.
“The sooner the better,” Mr Dawson had said, and George said the same, and so did Jean in a few sweet words that came in a day or two, and so did her aunt. Mrs Manners reminded her husband that she had told him of Marion’s conquest of her father on that first day of her visit to them last year, and also that she had foreseen this happy ending. So with all belonging to George so ready to welcome her child among them, and George himself so dear, what could Mrs Calderwood do but be glad also, and give her up with a good grace?
It was not so difficult a matter after all, she found when she had thus determined. And by and by she forgave her daughter for having been too easily won. And the visionary jealousy which had risen within her at the memory of her lost child vanished, though in her heart she doubted whether her poor dead Elsie had ever won such love as George had now to give her sister.
So the marriage day was set. It was not very soon, George thought, but the time was not unreasonably long, and it was hastened a little at the last. Captain Calderwood came home from his second voyage in his own ship sooner than was expected, and his stay was to be shorter than usual. The wedding was to be a very quiet one, and it could be hastened without interfering seriously with preparations. Marion had set her heart on her brother’s being with her, and it was so arranged, and all things went well.
All things but one. At the very last there came from Jean a letter with many good reasons why she could not come with her father and brother, and with many sweet words of love to the girl “whom she would have chosen from all the world to be her sister.” But Mr Dawson was there, intent on doing honour to the occasion, and Mr and Mrs Manners and Captain Saugster of the “John Seaton,” and of all people in the world, Sir Percy Harefield! who did not, it is to be supposed, come without an invitation, but who possibly suggested to Mr Dawson that he would like to receive one.
And all went well. There was no large party and no regular speech-making. The bridegroom said nothing, Captain Calderwood said only, “If he could have chosen a brother out of all the world, he would have chosen no other;” and Mr Dawson remembered the words of Jean’s letter to Marion, which she had shown him before she sent it away. Mr Dawson said a few words, but he was not so happy, because he could not help again expressing a wish that “by-ganes might be by-ganes,” which Mrs Calderwood thought he might have omitted on that day at least.
It came to an end, and the bride and bridegroom went away, and Mr Dawson and Sir Percy Harefield went with Captain Calderwood to see his ship, and they were all very friendly together; so friendly that Sir Percy had thoughts of turning his back on London and the prospective delights of the moors, and taking the voyage with Captain Calderwood to see what the other side of the world was like.
“And what thought ye o’ Willie himself?” asked Miss Jean, when Mr Dawson was telling her all this, after he had been at home a day or two. “Is he likely to be such a man as his father was?”
“There’s mair o’ him than ever there would ha’e been o’ his father, if he had been spared, poor man. He is much thought of by his employers. I thought him stiff at first. But he thawed out and was cordial and kindly after a little. He would have made the Englishman very welcome to go with him, if he had keepit in the same mind till he sailed. But I doubt, as Jean once said o’ him, he would have found him a heavy handfu’ ere a’ was done. I ken no greater misfortune that can befall a man than to have nothing to do in the world.”
“He has his soldiering?”
“No, he hasna even that now, and he is unfortunate in caring little for the occupations that seem to pass the time for folk o’ his class. He is coming north again, he says, and I dare say we’ll get a sight o’ him.”
“He was ay an idle man, even when he was a poor man.”
“Yes. But I ay think he might have been made something of, if the right woman would have taken him in hand.”
Miss Jean could not agree with him.
“And whether or no’, he needna come north to find her,” said she.
“No, I suppose not, but it is a pity.”
“George, man! I canna but wonder to hear you,” said his sister gravely.
“Weel, he has a kind heart, and I canna but be sorry for him. And he is a perfect gentleman.”
“Being sorry for him is one thing, and being willing to give him our best is another,” said Miss Jean, with a sharpness that made her brother smile. “But I’m no’ feared—”
Miss Jean paused. She was not quite sure that she had nothing to fear. To her it seemed that the Englishman had been wonderfully constant—“for the like o’ him”—and she was not quite so sure of Jean as she used to be.
One day while her father was away, they had been speaking of Mr Dawson’s wish that George should take his bride to Saughleas. Jean had said the best way to settle it would be for her to go away to a house of her own and then George could not refuse to take Marion to Saughleas.
“Weel,” said her aunt, “I dare say that might be brought about, if you could bring your mind to it.”
“I’ll bide a wee,” said Jean laughing, but her face grew grave enough in a minute or two.
“I have ay thought myself of some use to my father and George, but now George is away, and even my father would be content with Marion in my place.”
“That is scarcely the most cheerful way to look at it, or the wisest. And it’s no’ like you, Jean, my dear.”
“Are you thinking that I am jealous of Marion, Aunt Jean? No, it is not that I love her dearly, and I am glad for George, and for my father, since he is pleased. But are you sure that it gave you no pang to give up your brother to Mary Keith?”
Miss Jean smiled, and shook her head.
“I was growing an old woman even at that time. No, though she was almost a stranger to me, I was only glad for George. They loved one another.”
“And besides you were an independent woman, with a life and work of your own, and content.”
“Jean, my dear,” said her aunt, laying down her work and folding her hands on her lap, as was her way when she had something serious to say, “unless ye are keeping something in your heart that ye have never told to me, and there be a reason for it, I would hardly say that you are looking at things with your usual sense and cheerfulness. Do you think that your father has less need o’ you now than he has ay had? And do you think it is because o’ you that George is so set on taking his wife to the High-street? I see no great change that has come to you or your work, and though it is like giving up your brother in a sense, yet you are glad to do it. What has happened to you, my dear? Would it ease your heart to tell it to me?”
Jean had changed colour many times while her aunt was speaking, and now she sat with her eyes turned away to the sea, as if she were considering whether it would be well to speak. Miss Jean kept silence. She needed no words to tell her the girl’s trouble. She had guessed the cause of the weariness and restlessness that Jean could not hide from her, though she could keep a cheerful face before the rest of her world. But she thought it possible that after so long a silence it might do her heart good to speak, if it were only a word, and so she waited silently. But on the whole she was not sorry when Jean rose and took her hat in her hand to go.
“No, Auntie Jean, I have nothing to tell you, positively nothing. I am ‘ower weel off,’ as Tibbie Cairnie says. That is what ails me, I dare say.”
“You’ll ha’e May and her bairns through the summer, and plenty to do, and there is nothing better than that to put away—”
“Discontent,” said Jean, as her aunt hesitated for a word. “My dear, ye should ha’e gone with your father and George. It would ha’e done you good.”
“Well, perhaps it might. But it is too late now. Did I tell you that May wrote that Sir Percy Harefield was at the wedding?”
“No, ye didna tell me.”
“May thinks he asked my father to invite him, and my father seems to be as much taken up with him as ever. He is coming north again, she says.”
“And has his new tide changed him any, and his new possessions, does your sister say?”
“He has grown fat—more portly, May calls it,” said Jean laughing. “She says he is going to Parliament.”
“He’ll do little ill there, it’s likely.”
“And as little good, ye think, auntie. It will keep him out of mischief, as he used to say. And after all, I dare say he will do as well as most of them. He is a gentleman anyway, and that is ay something.”
And then she went away, and while Miss Jean mused on the cause of Jean’s discontent, she could not forget what she called the Englishman’s constancy, and she heartily wished that something might happen to keep him from coming north for a while.
“And I canna help thinking that if Jean had gone to her brother’s marriage, something might have happened to set her heart at rest.”
But that was not Jean’s thought. She had not said until the last moment that she was not going, partly because she wished to avoid discussion, and partly because of something else. The many good reasons by which she had succeeded in convincing her father that it was best for her to stay at home, were none of them the reason why she did not go. That could be told to no one. It was only with pain and something like a sense of shame—though she told herself angrily that there was no cause for shame—that she acknowledged to herself the reason.
“I care for him still, though he has forgotten me. I ay cared for him. And he loved me once, I know well. But if he loved me still, he would come and tell me. I could not go and meet him now—and his mother’s eyes would be on me—and yet, oh! how I long to see his face after all these years!”
After all these years she might well say. For since May’s marriage day, when her heart fell low as Marion told her that her brother had gone away, she had never seen him. He had come north once with George when she was away from home, and he had been in England more than once while she was visiting his sister, but he had never come to see her.
It had hurt her, but she had comforted herself, saying it was because of her father or perhaps also because of his own mother that he did not come. But since Marion was coming home to them, that could be no reason now if he cared, and almost up to the last moment she had waited, hoping that he might come. And then she told herself it was impossible that she should go to meet him, caring for him still.
“And the best thing I can do now is to put it all out of my mind forever.”
If she only could have done so, and she did her best to try. May came home with her father; and she and her pretty boys and her baby daughter were with them all the summer. And by and by George brought home his wife, and it was a gay and busy time with them all.
May, who saw most things that were passing, noticed that in some ways her sister was different from what she used to be. She was not the leader in all the gay doings, but left the young visitors at the house to amuse themselves in their own way. She was intent on household matters, as was right, and she took more time to herself in the quiet of her own room than she used to do. But she was merry enough with the children, and indeed gave much of her leisure to them, going about in the house and the garden with baby Mary in her arms, and the little brothers following in their train for many a pleasant hour.
George brought his wife home to the High-street. Even Mr Dawson after a while acknowledged that they had been wise to secure for themselves the quiet of a house of their own. Not that they began in these first days by living to themselves. There was enough to do. There were gay doings in many homes in honour of the bride, and the honour intended was generally accepted none the less gratefully or gracefully, that the gay doings could have been happily dispensed with by them both.
They had pleasures and occupations of another kind also, for Marion was too well-known to the poor folk of Portie to make her coming among them as young Mrs Dawson an intrusion or a trouble. So the young husband and wife went in and out together, “the very sicht o’ them,” as even Mrs Cairnie owned, “doing a body gude as they passed.”
And on the comings and goings of these happy young people, on the honour paid them, on their kindly words and deeds, and heartsome ways with rich and poor, with old friends and new, Mr Dawson looked and pondered with a constant, silent delight which few besides the two Jeans saw or suspected. Even they could not but wonder sometimes at the unceasing interest he found in them and their doings at home and abroad.
He wondered at it himself sometimes. It was like a new sweet spring of life to him to see them, and to hear about them, and to know that all things went well with them; and though few out of his own household could have seen any change in him, it was clear in many ways to those who saw him in his own house day by day.
“God leads His ain by many ways to Himself,” thought Miss Jean in her solitary musings over it all. “They that think they ken a’ the secrets o’ nature tell us that the flowing waters and the changing seasons, bringing whiles the frost and whiles the sunshine, have made from the rocks that look so unchangeable, much o’ the soil out of which comes bread to us all. And who kens but God’s gender dealings, coming after sore trouble, may prepare his heart for the richer springing o’ the good seed, till it bring forth a hundred-fold to His honour and glory. I ay kenned that the Lord had a richt hold o’ him through all, and that He would show him His face at last. Blessed be His name?”
“It whiles does folk gude to get their ain way about things, though that’s no’ the belief o’ gude folk generally, and nae in the Bible, as they would gar us believe,” said Mrs Cairnie, who never kept her opinions to herself if she could get any one to listen to them. “George Dawson is growing an auld failed man—and nae won’er considerin’ how lang he has been toilin’ and moilin’, gi’ein’ himsel’ neither nicht’s rest nor day’s ease. But auld and failed though he be, there’s a satisfied look on his face that naebody has seen there since the days he used to come in to the kirk wi’ his wife and a’ his bairns followin’ after him,—langer ago than ye’ll mind, Maggie, my woman. And for that matter naebody saw it then. It was satisfaction o’ anither kind that he had in those days, I’m thinkin’.”
“But, grannie,” said Maggie Saugster, giving her the name that the old woman liked best, though she would not acknowledge it, “is it about young Mr and Mrs Dawson you are thinkin’, or is it about May and her bairns? Because I mind ye once said to my mother and me that you doubted the old man wasna weel pleased when Mr George brought Marion Calderwood home.”
“Oh! ay. Ye’re gude at mindin’ things that’s nae speired at you whiles. He’s gotten his will about mair things than that of late, and what I say is, that it has done him gude, as trouble never did.”
“Maybe his satisfaction comes from giving up his ain will, rather than from getting it. I ken the look ye mean, mother,” said her daughter gently.
“Weel, it may be. A thing seems to ha’e taken a turn sin’ I was young. But it’s nae the look his face used to wear when man or woman countered him in the old days.”
“Ay. But it would be different when the Lord took him in hand.”
“The Lord has been lang about it, if it’s only the day that He’s takin’ him in hand. But what I’m sayin’ is this, that it does folk gude to get their ain will about things whiles, and I only wish that the Lord would try it on me, and set me strong on my ain twa feet again,” said Mrs Cairnie, taking up her crutch with a sigh.
“Or satisfy you with His will instead. That would do as well, mother.”
“Weel, weel! That’s your way o’ it, and if I’m allowed to tak’ the wrang gait, it winna be for want o’ tellin’,” said the old woman, moving slowly down to the corner of the street which was almost the length of her tether now. The eyes of the others followed her pitifully.
“She’s nae that sharp now—nae that soon angered, I mean,” said Maggie, with some hesitation, meaning to say something kind, but not quite sure how far her sister-in-law might accept her sympathy.
“No,” said the other after a pause. “And I whiles think that the Lord is getting His will o’ her too, though she hardly kens it hersel’ yet.”
“Ay. As Miss Jean says, the Lord has many ways,” said Maggie reverently.