Mr Dawson looked up and met the question in Jean’s eyes, but he did not answer it, and her lips were silent. She did not need an answer. Though she had heard nothing, she seemed to know how it had been with her aunt. Disappointment had come to her in her youth. Whether death had brought it, or change, or misunderstanding, or something harder to bear than these, she knew not; but however it had come, it had doubtless been a part of the discipline that had wrought toward the mingled strength and sweetness of her aunt’s character, so beautiful in Jean’s eyes. She forgot her father in thinking about it.
And for the same reason her father forget her. There were none like his sister in his esteem. None, of all the women he had seen grow old, had lived a life so useful, or were so beloved and respected in their old age as she. Her life—except for a year or two—had never been solitary in a painful sense, he thought. It had been, and was still, full of interest—bound up with the lives and enjoyment of others, as much as the life of any married woman of them all.
“And if she were to die to-night, there are more in Portie that would miss and mourn her than for many mothers of families, and that is not more than all would acknowledge who ken what she is and what she has done in the town.”
But for his daughter? No, it was not a life like her aunt’s that he desired for her. His eye came back to her as the thought passed through his mind. She was gazing straight before her, in among the trees, but it was not the brown buds nor the opening leaves that she saw, he knew well.
What could it be that brought that far-away look to her eyes. Was she looking backwards or forwards? Where were her thoughts wandering? Her look need not have vexed him. It was a little sad, but she smiled as though her thoughts were not altogether painful. He could not but be uneasy as he watched her. He loved her so dearly, she counted for so much in his life, that he longed for her confidence in all things, and he knew that there was something behind that smile which he could not see.
“Weel?” said he as she turned and met his look.
“I should go back to the house, you are thinking? Yes, I am going. But, papa—it will not be very soon? May’s going away, I mean.”
“That is all before us. I can say nothing now. I doubt all that will be taken out of our hands, my lassie. He is in earnest, yon lad.”
“But, papa—it is surely our right to say when it is to be? And May is so young—not nineteen yet.”
“Just her mother’s age, when—”