Beyond the wood were the low fields through which the Saugh burn ran. Parks they were called, but they were just long grassy fields, with rough stone walls round them, and cows and sheep feeding in them. There was no “Park,” in the grand sense of the term, about Saughleas as yet. There was no space for one without appropriating some of the best fields from the leased farms, and if things had gone right with him, that might have been done in time, Mr Dawson sometimes said to himself with a sigh.
But things had not gone right with him of late. Any thing but that—if one might judge from the look of care and pain, that had become almost habitual to him now.
“George, man, is it worth your while to wear your life away gathering gear that ye dinna need, when ye might be enjoying what ye have in this bonny place?”
“It is a bonny place,” was all he said in reply.
They were sitting, not on the lawn, but on the other side of the drive, where the sunshine was softened by the fluttering beech leaves overhead. At least, Miss Jean was sitting there. Her brother was “daundering” up and down the walk with his hands clasped behind him, as his way was, lingering a little, now at the gate and now at his sister’s side. He had forgotten her for the moment, as he stood looking out toward the distant sea, and the look which his daughter had come to know well, but which his sister was seldom suffered to see, came to his face and rested on it still when he turned along the walk again. And so he spoke.
“It is a bonny place,” he answered, and then he walked away. But though he let his eyes wander over the gardens and the wood, and the fields beyond, there came to his face no glad look of possession or self-gratulation, and his head drooped lower and his step lagged as he drew near her again. He stood silent at her side, as though he expected her to say more, but she said nothing.
“It is a bonny place,” said he again, “though it has given me but little pleasure as yet, and whiles I think that I am near done with it—and—there’s none to come after me.”
“George, man! that’s an ill thing to say.”
“But it’s true for a’ that God knows I was thinking little of myself when I put the winnings of my whole life into the land. And what is likely to come of it? Ye might weel say, Jean, that God’s blessing hasna been upon it.”
“No, I would never say that.”