He had stared hard at them and then slouched away, Polly apologising for his presence.
“You see, Miss Julia, Miss Cynthia, he’s my husband’s own brother, and we don’t want him to feel that we turn our backs upon him.”
“No, of course not,” said Cynthia, “but I wish he would keep away;” and then they had a long chat with the little wife. She looked very pretty and pathetic in her deep mourning, and they parted very tenderly, Julia’s heart bleeding for the stricken woman.
“I’d have given anything to have asked her to show me where they buried poor baby,” said Cynthia, “but I dare not even allude to it.”
“No, of course not,” said Julia, with a shiver. “It was very sad; I can’t bear to think of it at all. Keep close to me, Cynthy,” she whispered.
They had suddenly come upon Jock Morrison, smoking his pipe as he sat upon a stile by the side of the lane, and as they passed he stared hard at Julia and laughed in a half-mocking way.
“How dare he stare at us like that!” said Cynthia haughtily, and then she began chatting about Polly Morrison’s trouble, and wishing that papa had not been so strict, and the meeting was forgotten till, three days later, when they reached London, and as they got out of the train, Julia started, for there, leaning against a barrier with his hands in his pockets, was Jock Morrison again.
The next day she saw him staring up at the house, and day after day afterwards she was sure to encounter his bold fierce gaze somewhere or another, till she grew quite nervous, telling her sister that she was certain that the mail was meditating some form of revenge against their father for sending him to prison.
“Nonsense!” cried Cynthia. “Papa is a magistrate, and he would not dare.”
Back at Lawford, and they were free of the incubus, in fact Jock Morrison passed out of mind; for in spite of his breathing out threatenings of poverty, the Reverend Eli Mallow, now that he found his eldest son had not come to him for money, had opened the rectory doors to receive visitors.