Jean had changed colour many times while her aunt was speaking, and now she sat with her eyes turned away to the sea, as if she were considering whether it would be well to speak. Miss Jean kept silence. She needed no words to tell her the girl’s trouble. She had guessed the cause of the weariness and restlessness that Jean could not hide from her, though she could keep a cheerful face before the rest of her world. But she thought it possible that after so long a silence it might do her heart good to speak, if it were only a word, and so she waited silently. But on the whole she was not sorry when Jean rose and took her hat in her hand to go.
“No, Auntie Jean, I have nothing to tell you, positively nothing. I am ‘ower weel off,’ as Tibbie Cairnie says. That is what ails me, I dare say.”
“You’ll ha’e May and her bairns through the summer, and plenty to do, and there is nothing better than that to put away—”
“Discontent,” said Jean, as her aunt hesitated for a word. “My dear, ye should ha’e gone with your father and George. It would ha’e done you good.”
“Well, perhaps it might. But it is too late now. Did I tell you that May wrote that Sir Percy Harefield was at the wedding?”
“No, ye didna tell me.”
“May thinks he asked my father to invite him, and my father seems to be as much taken up with him as ever. He is coming north again, she says.”
“And has his new tide changed him any, and his new possessions, does your sister say?”
“He has grown fat—more portly, May calls it,” said Jean laughing. “She says he is going to Parliament.”
“He’ll do little ill there, it’s likely.”