The shock which his unexpected words gave his sister was not all pain. She had thought him only too well content with his life and with what he had done in it. He was going down the hill now. It was well that he should acknowledge—that he should even be made sharply to feel, that all that he had—though it were ten times more—was not enough for a portion. But the bitter sadness of his look smote her painfully.
“God help him!” she said in her heart, but to him she said nothing. He did not take her silence for want of sympathy. He was too well acquainted with her ways for that, and in a little he added,—
“Like other folk I have heard o’, I have gotten my wish, but all that made it worth the having has been taken from me. Gin she had lived—”
His sister did not speak. She just laid her hand on his for a moment, and looked at him with grave, wet eyes.
“If she had lived,” he went on, not yielding to the weakness that had come upon, him, “if she had lived, the rest might have been hindered.”
“God knows,” said Miss Jean softly, taking up her knitting again.
“Ay, He knows, but I dinna seem to be able to tak’ the good o’ that that some folk do. But good or no good, I man submit—like the lave.”
“Here are the bairns,” said Miss Jean softly as the two sisters came through one of the open windows to the terrace about the lawn—“a sight worth seeing” the father in the midst of his painful thoughts acknowledged. They lingered a moment in the terrace raised a little above the lawn, the one stooping over a bonny bush of wee Scotch roses at her feet, the other standing on tiptoe trying to entangle a wandering spray of honeysuckle that it might find support. The eyes of father and aunt could not but rest on them with pleasure.
“I wonder that I ever could have thought them so much alike,” said their father, in a little.
“They’re like and they’re no’ like,” said Miss Jean.