“Rosie, dear, Charlie has come.”
“Oh! Charlie has come, has he? That is it, is it?” said Rose, with a long breath.
Yes, there was Mr Millar, offering his hand and smiling—“exactly like himself,” Rose thought, but she could not tell very well, for her eyes were dazzled with the red light of the setting sun. But she was very glad to see him, she told him; and she told the minister she was very glad to see him, too, in the very same tone, the next minute. There was not much time to say anything, however, for Hannah—whose patience had been tried by the delay—announced that tea was on the table, in a tone quite too peremptory to be trifled with.
“Rose, you are tired, I am sure. Never mind taking off your habit till after tea.”
Rose confessed herself tired after her long and rapid ride.
“For I left Mr Snow at Major Spring’s, and went on a long way by myself, and it is just possible, that, after all, you are right, and I have gone too far for the first ride; for see, I am a little shaky,” added she, as the teacup she passed to Mr Snow trembled in her hand.
Then she asked Mr Millar about the news he had brought them, and whether all were well, and a question or two besides; and then she gave herself up to the pleasure of listening to the conversation of the minister, and it came into Graeme’s mind that if Harry had been there he would have said she was amusing herself with a little serious flirtation. Graeme did not think so, or, if she did, it did not make her angry as it would have made Harry; for though she said little, except to the grave wee Rosie Nasmyth, whom she had taken under her care, she looked very bright and glad. Rose looked at her once or twice, a little startled, and after a while, in watching her, evidently lost the thread of the minister’s entertaining discourse, and answered him at random.
“I have a note from Harry,” said Graeme, as they left the tea-table. “Here it is. Go and take off your habit. You look hot and tired.”
In a little while the visitors were gone and Mr Millar was being put through a course of questions by Mr Snow. Graeme sat and listened to them, and thought of Rose, who, all the time, was sitting up-stairs with Harry’s letter in her hand.
It was not a long letter. Rose had time to read it a dozen times over, Graeme knew, but still she lingered, for a reason she could not have told to any one, which she did not even care to make very plain to herself. Mr Snow was asking, and Mr Millar was answering, questions about Scotland, and Will, and Mr Ruthven, and every word that was said was intensely interesting to her; and yet, while she listened eagerly, and put in a word now and then that showed how much she cared, she was conscious all the time, that she was listening for the sound of a movement overhead, or for her sister’s footstep on the stair. By and by, as Charlie went on, in answer to Mr Snow’s questions, to tell about the state of agriculture in his native shire, her attention wandered altogether, and she listened only for the footsteps.