His son was coming home; but, alas! he could never have his light-hearted, bonny laddie back again. George was a man now, “knowing good and evil.” It could never be again between them as it had been before their trouble came.
“Ane o’ your kind, Miss Jean,” the mate had said; “a changed man.”
Mr Dawson’s thoughts went back to the time of his sister’s trouble, when she had become “a changed woman.” All the anger and vexation, that had then seemed natural and right, because of her new ways, had passed out of his heart, a score of years and more. It was as though it had never been. He glanced up at her placid face, and said to himself, as he had said before many times, “A woman among a thousand.” But he remembered the old pain, though it was gone, and he shrank from the thought that he might have to suffer again through his son.
“He is a man now, and must go his ain way,” he said to himself, moving uneasily on his chair and sighing. “We canna begin again where we left off. Ungrateful? Yes, I dare say it would be so called; but, oh! Geordie, my lad! I doubt your way and mine must lie asunder now.”
Miss Jean too had some thoughts which she would not have cared to tell, but they were not about George; for him she was altogether joyful. If Willie Calderwood’s words about him were true, and he were indeed “a changed man,” nothing else mattered much in Miss Jean’s esteem. The “good,” for which he had God’s promise as security would be wrought out in him whether by health or sickness, by joy or sorrow, by possession or loss, and through him might be brought help and healing, higher hopes, and better lives to many. The Master who had chosen him would use him for His own work, and that implied all that was to be desired for any one to Miss Jean.
But in the midst of her joy for him, she could not forget Jean’s silence, and Willie Calderwood’s averted eyes. And though she told herself that possible pain and disappointment could work good to her niece as well as to her nephew, she could not but shrink beforehand from the suffering that might be before her. But it was not a trouble to be spoken about.
Neither had spoken for a long time, when the door opened and Jean came in. She was wrapped in her dressing-gown, over which her long hair hung, and her face looked pale and troubled.
“Are you here still, Auntie Jean? No, don’t go, papa,” said she as he rose. “I have something to tell you.”
“It maun be late. I thought you had been in your bed this hour and more,” said her father.
“Yes, papa, I was in bed, but I couldna sleep.”