"It's such a common thing for trains to break down! Just as likely as not!"
"Now, Giles! I do wish though, that I had gone to the station to meet her. If it had not been for the rain—"
"Why didn't you ask me to go?"
"You!!"
Giles Cuthbert laughed. He was a rather largely-built man, with long loose limbs, and a sunburnt face, not good-looking as to feature, yet attractive from its humorous geniality. His movements were deliberate and gentlemanly; and he had a curious voice, soft, low, somewhat drawling, but without affectation. The man altogether was entirely natural. In age he might have been almost anywhere between thirty and forty-five.
"How old is this little girl?"
"Jean! I don't exactly know. I have been trying to remember; but the years do go so fast—and one doesn't exactly like to inquire, because it seems as if one had not cared. I could ask Jem, to be sure, but I always forget. She must be—thirteen—fourteen—nearly fourteen! It is years since I have seen any of those Trevelyans. Jean's mother was a sweet woman but her father—No, I never did care for Stewart."
"Hasn't she been here before?"
"I'm afraid I have never asked her. Things have come about so, you know. One can't always be seeing all one's relations, and Dulveriford is out of the way—so far north. I shouldn't have thought of asking the child now, only Jem put the idea into my head; he said she wanted a change, he thought. She had had a fright or something, and somebody wrote word to Jem that she was not looking well. O I remember—there was a poor old gentleman found frozen to death at night on the marshes; and Jean happened to be there."
"Odd place for a child to happen to be in."