Before twenty-four hours were over he would have given much that he had not uttered the words. But George and his friend caught at the idea, and before they went into the house all arrangements for going with Captain Saugster for a few hours’ sail were made. Miss Jean looked grave when the plan was spoken of, but she said nothing in the hearing of her brother.
“Ye winna bide awa’ long, and make us anxious,” said she.
They must not stay long, for Willie had but a single day, or at most two to see all the folk he wanted to see in Portie, and they would be certainly home early in the morning. There was no time to discuss or even to consider the matter. Willie had only a word or two with his sister, but he followed every movement of hers with glad, proud eyes; and when she went for a moment out of the room, he said softly to Miss Jean, “She has grown a woman now, our wee Maysie.”
And Miss Jean said as softly and a little sadly, “Ay, has she!”
Did George’s eyes follow her too? His father could not but think so.
“For the sake of the girl who is dead,” he said to himself with a pang.
Marion’s eyes were only for her brother, but she had few words even for him. They had little time for words. They bade Miss Jean and Marion “good-bye” in the house. By and by, Mr Dawson saw Marion standing a little apart from the group of women gathered on the pier, but when he looked again she was no longer to be seen. He was a little disappointed. He thought if they had walked up to his sister’s house together, he might have said a word to dispel the cloud of shyness or vexation that had somehow come between them since the day she had gone with the Petries to the Castle.
He would not make much of it, by speaking about it openly, nor could he bring himself to ask his sister about it. Miss Jean was not easy to approach on the subject of the Calderwoods. She had never said one word to anger him at the time when she had thought him hard and unreasonable with regard to them, and neither had she noticed by word or look the interest with which he had come to regard her young visitor; and her silence made it all the more difficult for him to speak. But when he went in on his way home, as it drew towards gloaming, and found her sitting alone in her darkening parlour, he asked her why she did not have lights brought in, and where was her visitor.
“Marion went over to the Tangle Stanes with the skipper’s wife and Maggie, and I dare say she has gone hame with her. Her troubles are begun, puir body—Annie Saugster’s—I mean.”
“What should ail her? She has just the troubles that ay maun fa’ on sailors’ wives.”