“But why should you vex yoursel’ about it.”
“I doubt I was wrong to bring her. And I’m sorry for the young man.”
“Oh! as to that, he’ll win over it, as he has done before. There is no fear.”
But Miss Jean still looked grave and troubled. “That was different. Our Jean was the most beautiful woman and the best match in the town, and no doubt he believed that he was in love with her, but this is different; and it will do him harm, I fear.”
“Well, I canna see that you are needing to make yourself responsible for Jamie Petrie’s well-being, if that is all.”
But that was not all. Miss Jean had anxious thoughts about others besides James Petrie. Her anxiety she could not share with her brother however, and she said no more.
Nor was Mr Dawson more inclined to carry on the conversation. The pain of past years was sharply stirring within him, though even his sister did not guess it from his words or his manner. Indeed he hardly knew it himself, till they fell into silence; but that night his head pressed a wakeful pillow, and the ghosts of old troubles came back upon him.
How vividly it came back to him, all that he had suffered in those nights long ago when he could not sleep for the pain and the anger and the utter disappointment in his hopes for his son! In those nights he had sometimes had a doubt whether he had wrought wisely toward the desired end, but he had never doubted as to the wisdom of that end—till to-night.
Was John Petrie, whose judgment when exercised beyond the even routine of business, he had never highly valued—was John Petrie showing himself wiser in yielding to the wishes of his son, than he had been in resisting the wishes of his?
What an influence for good in a man’s life must be the love of such a girl as Marion Calderwood. Had bonny Elsie been one like her? Remembering the sweet, calm eyes of the girl so long dead and gone, the gentle strength, the patient firmness by which she withstood not him alone, but her own mother whom she loved, rather than break her promise to the lad who loved her, he could not but doubt whether he had judged wisely then, and whether he had afterward dealt wisely with his son.