“Is it me, Janet? Hae I done anything? You ken I wouldna willingly do wrong?” pleaded Graeme.
Janet put her fingers over the girl’s lips.
“Whist, my lammie. It’s naething—or naething that can be helpit,” and she struggled fiercely to keep back the flood that was swelling in her full heart. Graeme said nothing, but stroked the toil-worn hand of her friend, and at last laid her cheek down upon it.
“Lassie, lassie! I canna help it,” and the long pent up flood gushed forth, and the tears fell on Graeme’s bent head like rain. Graeme neither moved nor spoke, but she prayed in her heart that God would comfort her friend in her unknown sorrow; and by the first words she spoke she knew that she was comforted.
“I am an auld fule, I believe, or a spoiled bairn, that doesna ken it’s ain mind, and I think I’m growing waur ilka day,” and she paused to wipe the tears from her face.
“But what is it, Janet?” asked Graeme, softly.
“It’s naething, dear, naething that I can tell to mortal. I dinna ken what has come ower me. It’s just as if a giant had a gripe o’ me, and move I canna. But surely I’ll be set free in time.”
There was nothing Graeme could say to this; but she laid her cheek down on Janet’s hand again, and there were tears upon it.
“Now dinna do that, Miss Graeme,” cried Janet, struggling with another wave of the returning flood. “What will come o’ us if you give way. There’s naething ails me but that I’m an auld fule, and I canna help that, you ken.”
“Janet, it was an awful sacrifice you made, to leave your mother and Sandy to come with us. I never thought till to-night how great it must have been.”