He did not see Marion the next day when he called at Miss Jean’s house, nor the next, nor for several days, and friendly though they had become, he still felt a certain disinclination to ask Miss Jean about her. He caught a glimpse of her on the third morning as he was coming down the High-street, but she turned toward the shore before he came near. She had not seen him, he thought.
When he did see her at last, sitting sedately, her eyes and her hands occupied with her work in Miss Jean’s parlour, the same thought came into his mind.
“Something has happened to her. Some one has been saying something to vex her, whatever it may be. But young lasses are whiles easily vexed.”
The next time that Miss Jean was asked to spend a day at Saughleas, it rained heavily, and she could not go, and when she was asked again, Marion was engaged to go somewhere else, and Miss Jean went alone.
“Oh! ay, she is quite right to please hersel’,” said Mr Dawson coldly, when Miss Jean explained that it was necessary that she should go and visit Miss Spence that day, because the visit had been put off more than once before.
“Miss Spence was a friend of her mother lang syne,” said Miss Jean.
Mr Dawson did not ask, as he had meant to do, what had happened to vex the girl, though he guessed from Miss Jean’s manner, that whatever happened, it was known to her.