“It is dismal, indeed. Fanny, look at that melancholy cat. She wants to come in, but she is afraid to leave her present shelter. Poor wee pussy.”
“Graeme, don’t you wish Arthur were coming home,” said Fanny, hanging about her as she had a fashion of doing now and then.
“Yes, indeed. But we must not tell him so. It would make him vain if he knew how much we missed him. Go and change your dress, dear, and we’ll have a fire, and an early tea, and a nice little gossip in the firelight, and then we won’t miss him so much.”
“Fire!” repeated Rose, looking disconsolately at the pretty ornaments of the grate with which she had taken so much pains. “Who ever heard of a fire in a grate at this time of the year?”
But Rose was overruled. They had a fire and an early tea, and then, sitting in the firelight, they had a gossip, too; about many different things. Janet told them more than she had ever told them before, of how she had “wearied for them” when they first left Merleville, and by and by Rose said,—
“But that was all over when Sandy came.”
“It was over before that, for his coming was long delayed, as you’ll mind yourselves. I was quite content before that time, but of course it was a great thing to me, the coming of my Sandy.”
“Oh! how glad you must have been!” said Rose. “I wish I had been there to see. Tell us what you said to him, and what he said to you.”
“I dinna mind what I said to him, or if I said anything at all. And he just said, ‘Well, mother!’ with his heartsome smile, and the shine of tears in his bonny blue e’en,” said Janet, with a laugh that might very easily have changed to a sob; “and oh! bairns, if ever I carried a thankful heart to a throne of grace, I did that night.”
“And would you have known him?” asked Rose, gently.