“It’s an ill omen, I doubt,” said Jean in a whisper. “But never mind the shawl; you shall have my bonny blue one instead. And now we may go home.”
“It is all folly from first to last,” said May. “And what I am to say about my shawl, I canna tell.”
“Say nothing. Who has a right to ask? And, May, I think I’ll walk home—to warm myself, for I am cold.” She looked cold and could not keep herself from trembling. “Go back to Auntie Jean’s. My father will be sure to seek us there, and I’ll be home before you.”
May was not sure of the wisdom of consenting to meet her father without her sister, lest he might ask any questions as to how they had spent the afternoon. But hoping that she might get to her aunt’s house before him, she hurried away, scarcely remembering till she sat beside her aunt’s pleasant fire, that she had left her sister standing there on the desolate wind-swept height.
And there she stood while the ship went slowly on its northern way, “carrying her life with it,” she said to herself, in vague wonder at the utter faintness of heart, and weariness of body which had fallen upon her.
“What has come to me?” she muttered. “What is Willie Calderwood to me, but a friend? He has ay been that, and ay will be, and if he is more to my bonny May—why that makes him more to me—and not less, surely. And friends must part. There is many a sair heart in Portie the night—and folk man just thole whatever is sent, and say nothing. And oh! if Geordie would but come home?”
Again the clouds parted, and a gleam of sunshine touched the water, giving her one more glimpse of the white sails of the ship before she went down to the north, and then there was but “the fearsome waves of the sea,” from which she could scarcely turn her dazed eyes. But she had to take her way down the steep rocks, and through the wet fields, the near way home. She lingered and walked wearily, and it was growing dark when she went in at the gate.
“Is it you, Miss Dawson?” said a voice in the darkness. “Has any thing happened? Are ye your lane?”
“Nothing has happened. I preferred to walk. Are they not come yet?”
“Nobody has come yet, Miss Dawson, and there has been nobody here but Robbie Saugster, wantin’ a book that you promised him—or Miss May maybe it was,” said Phemie. “You were hardly awa’ ere he was here, and he said he’d come back the morn.”