It was a rare thing for Jean to speak her mother’s name to her father. It came now with a smile, but with a rush of tears also, which surprised herself quite as much as they surprised her father, and she turned away to hide them. It was her father’s loss she was thinking of rather than her own.
“Ay, my lassie! May they be as blessed here as we were,” said her father.
And so the first look of his once happy home was gotten over with no more tender words between them, and they went slowly home together, through the fields this time.
Many things had wrought toward the change which Mrs Cairnie and other folk as well saw in Mr Dawson about this time. The new life which George was making honourable among his fellow townsmen, the firm stand he took on the side of right in all matters where his influence could be brought to bear, the light hold that wealth, or the winning of it for its own sake, had ever had upon him, had all by slow degrees told on the old man’s opinions and feelings. But as to his wish for his son’s marriage with Marion Calderwood, it was Marion herself who had brought that about.
He had noticed her, and had liked her frank, fearless ways before she left Portie, and the sight-seeing together in London, and more still, the few quiet days which she had spent with Miss Jean at Saughleas, won him quite. It was going beyond the truth, as Mrs Saugster had said, to declare that the old man had made the marriage, though it is doubtful whether it would have come about so soon, or whether it would have come about at all, if it had not been for a question or two that he had put to his sister as he sat once in the gloaming in her house.
Then there was a softly spoken word or two between Miss Jean and her nephew, and then George went straight to his father.
“Father, I am going to ask Marion Calderwood to be my wife, if you will give your consent.”
It would not have been like Mr Dawson if he had shown at the first word the pleasure with which he heard it.
“You are of age now, George, and your ain man. I have no right to hinder you.”
“Father,” said George, after a moment’s silence, “I shall think you have not forgiven the past, if you say the like of that.”