“But why should you speak as if you were not to be here? Why should you go away?”
“Only for a little while, papa. And then George and Marion would stay. And it is not for that altogether. I would like to go a while for my own sake. I think I need a change.”
“Are ye no’ weel?” said her father in some surprise.
“Oh! I am well enough; but I would like to go away for a little. I am tired, I think. We have been anxious, you know, especially when George and Mrs Calderwood were away. And I think I am wearying for a sight of May and the bairns. I know a change would be good for me, for a little, I mean.”
She spoke with some difficulty, and the colour was coming and going on her cheek. Her father’s surprise changed to anxiety as he regarded her. He saw as her aunt had seen, that she had grown thin and pale, and that her eyes looked large and anxious, like eyes that had slept little of late.
“What ails ye, my lassie? Ye’re surely no’ weel. If it’s only May and her bairns that ye’re wanting, ye can easy get them. Only,” continued Mr Dawson after a little, “it might hardly look kind to go away now, till the ‘Ben Nevis’ has been heard from again.”
“No, I suppose not.”
“And if we shouldna hear—ye’ll be needed all the more. Willie Calderwood will be a hero to the seafaring folk o’ Portie when he does come. And I dare say ye’ll like to see him as well as the rest.”
“Yes. It is long since I saw him.”
“If he brings the ‘Ben Nevis’ safe to an English port, his reputation will be established, and his fortune will be made. That is as far as a mere sea captain can be said to be able to make a fortune by his profession. He must be a man of great courage and strength of character, as George says, even to have made the attempt to bring the ship home. They may weel be proud of him,—his sister and his mother, and we must do nothing that would seem to lichtlify him—neither you nor me.”