The Twa Miss Dawsons

by Margaret M. Robertson

“It is not so bad as a year’s voyage to the north,” she told herself. “Portie is his home while his mother is here and Marion.”

But he had spoken no word to her before he went, as he might have done, if he had been going away to the dangers of the Arctic seas. That was the pain to her. But she comforted herself. Though she knew his pride was strong, she thought that his love would prove stronger still, and he would speak when the right time came.

But when Willie had crossed the sea twice, and twice again, still he did not come to Portie. He went instead to London, and there he fell in with an aunt of his father’s who, in years long past, had been the wife of a London merchant, but who was a childless widow now. She had been left with a large house and a small income more than thirty years ago, when she was young and courageous, and she had put aside all the traditions of the class into which marriage had brought her, and had fallen back on the belief in which she had been brought up in her home in the north, that honest work honourably followed was a blessing to be thankful for, rather than a burden to be borne.

So her head and her hands and her house were all put to use, and she had lived a busy and a happy life since then. But she was growing old now, and her heart longed for her own land and kindred, so when she saw Willie, and heard of his mother who was a widow, and his young sister Marion, she begged them to come to her for a while.

It is doubtful whether Mrs Calderwood would have had the courage to accept the invitation, if the thought of leaving Portie had not been already familiar to her; and it is equally doubtful whether she would have had the courage to go away, if this invitation had not come. It was for a visit that they were going, she said, but her house was given up, the few things which she valued and could not take with her, were safely put away in an empty room in Miss Jean’s house. And no one knew when she might be expected in Portie again.

Jean had not often seen Mrs Calderwood since the day she had gone to ask Marion to visit her at the time her sister May was in London, but she saw her now in her aunt’s house, where the last few days of the mother and daughter were passed, and though they both strove against it, there was a shadow of embarrassment between them.

“We’ll maybe see May in London, and we’ll be sure to see you when you come to visit her there,” Marion said, including both George and Jean in her words.

“London is a large place, and Mrs Manners has her own friends,” said Mrs Calderwood.

“We shall find you out, never fear, and we winna forget you even if you should live in London all your life.”

Marion laughed and then looked grave.