Chapter Twenty One.
A Meeting.
Mr Dawson and Miss Jean were sitting on the terrace by the parlour window as they went in. Jean knew by many signs that her father and Marion had come to be very good friends, and she was prepared to see him give her a warm and kindly welcome. But she was a little surprised at the ease and pleasure with which Marion met him. She did not turn away after a shy brief greeting, as the young people who came there were rather apt to do, but smiled brightly and answered merrily when he asked her whether she had enjoyed all that she had expected to enjoy when she came to Portie. And then she sat down on the grass at Miss Jean’s feet, and looked round with a sigh of satisfaction at “the bonny place.”
“What kept you on the way?” asked Miss Jean. “Oh! we came round by the shore,” said her niece, “and we sat a while at the Tangle Stanes, and then we went in to see Mrs Cairnie—and by the by—we didna see her after all.”
“She was sleeping,” said Marion.
“And we were admiring the fine things that Captain Saugster has been gathering for his bride,” said Jean.
“That would hardly have kept you long,” said Mr Dawson. “A few chairs and a table, and a bed and blankets, and some dishes.”
“But we saw more than that; didna we, Marion?”
“Yes. Even Annie herself wasna thinking of chairs and tables and dishes. It was of the new home that is to be there, we were thinking, and it never might have been, if—Jean, tell them what Annie said.”