While Randy dreamed at her window, Helen stood in the doorway at Mrs. Gray’s, and she, too, was thinking of the summer so happily spent.
Soon she would be at home, and in a few months the winter season would bring a round of social engagements.
Why had the days so quietly spent seemed so charming? What was the secret of their charm? Happy she had been,—very, very happy,—and so swiftly had the weeks sped that it seemed impossible that October had arrived. She had chosen to spend the summer, contrary to her usual custom, in a little country village, with no other thought than that in such a place she could be sure of rest and quiet.
She was a girl of generous impulses, and after becoming acquainted with the people of the neighborhood of the Gray homestead, many an opportunity for a gracious word or a generous action presented itself. How gently and with what ready tact she had made herself a friend to young and old, was proven by the genuine regret manifested whenever her departure was mentioned.
Helen had a host of friends of whom to take leave, and all were charmed and gladdened to hear that they would see her sweet face again sometime during the winter. She had called to see old Sandy once more before her departure, and he had had a wonderful bit of news to tell.
The letter which he had written after his return from the apple-bee he had posted early on the following morning. It was addressed to Miss Margaret McLean, and Sandy explained that, as her father had been a prominent manufacturer in the little Scottish town in which they had lived for years, holding large business interests and owning a number of mills which bore his name, the daughter, his only child, must be well known there; so he had trusted that the letter, written after so many years’ delay, might be promptly delivered.
Strangely enough, it had never occurred to Sandy to wonder if his old playmate were still living. To his great joy, an answer to the letter came sooner than he had expected. She was still waiting for him, she said, as she had ever waited, hoping that the time would come when he would forgive her for teasing him,—it had been but a girlish freak,—and tell her that he loved her as of old.
Her father had lost much of his money before he died, but she had a “bit of property,” she said, and she had sold her little cottage and would leave on the next steamer for America. She would bring with her a little Scotch lass, an orphan whom she had befriended and trained to be a little maid-servant; and, insisting that Sandy should meet her and go at once to some kirk to be married, she closed her letter with love to Sandy and a blessing for Helen and the wee lass, Prue. To Helen’s congratulations he would only say, “It’s your doing, lass, yours and the bairnie’s.”
Sandy confided to Helen that he had been afraid that Margaret might doubt that he and the Sandy McLeod of her youth were one and the same; but, he added: “I had a proof, I had a proof, lass! I had a lock o’ her bonnie hair tied wi’ a knot o’ blue ribbon. I knew she’d na forget gi’en’ it to me, and I put it in the letter.”
“That was clever,” said Helen.