He rose as if to go, but sat down again and said quietly, “A few months sooner or later will make little difference, and we could hardly expect that he would hear of making it a matter of years. Nor would I wish it.”
“But it will not be—just at once?” said Jean. She had almost said “not till the ‘John Seaton’ comes home.”
“Well, not just at once. There is time enough to decide that.”
Mr Dawson looked doubtfully at his daughter. The look he had wondered at had left her face. She had grown pale and her eyes had the strained and anxious look that had more than once pained him during the winter. The question over which she had wearied herself then was up again.
“Shall I speak to him about Geordie? Shall I tell him how he went away?” But he did not know her thoughts, and fancied she was grieving about her sister.
“My dear, it is hard on you for the moment. But it is not like losing your sister altogether.”
“Papa! It is not May I am thinking about. It is—Geordie. Oh, papa, papa!”
“My dear,” said her father after a pause, “it will do no good to think of one who thinks so little of us. Think of him! We maun ay do that, whether we will or no’. But I whiles think he maun be dead. He could not surely have forgotten us so utterly.”
His last words were almost a cry, and he turned his face away.
“Papa!” said Jean with a gasp, and in another moment she would have told him all. But before she could add a word he was gone—not back by the path to the house, but through the wood the other way, slowly and heavily with his head bowed down. Jean looked after him with a sick heart.