Phemie came in and the breakfast things were removed, and the girls went their several ways. Miss Jean, who was still lame from a fall she had got in the winter, went slowly to her chair near a sunny window and sat looking out upon the lawn. Mr Dawson went here and there, gathering together some papers, in preparation for his departure to the town. He had something to say, his sister knew as well as if he had told her, and she would gladly have helped him to say it, as it did not seem to be easy for him to begin. But she did not know what he wished to speak about, or why he should hesitate to begin. At last, standing a little behind her, he said,—
“It’s no’ like John Petrie and his wife to do a foolish thing, but they are doing it now. And their son Jamie just the age to make a fool o’ himself, for the sake o’ a bonny face. ‘A rose among the other flowers,’ no less, said May.”
“But Jean said better. ‘A violet in the wood.’ She is a modest little creature—though she has a strong, brave nature, and will hold her own with any Petrie o’ them a’. And as good as the best o’ them to my thinking.”
“Well, that mayna be the father’s thought, though it may be the son’s.”
“Dinna fash yoursel’ about Jamie Petrie. He’ll fall into no such trouble. It’s no’ in him?” added Miss Jean with a touch of scorn.
“I never saw the lad yet that hadna it in him to ken a bonny lass when she came in his way; and for the lassie’s ain sake, ye should take thought for her.”
“She has her mother,” said Miss Jean, more hastily than was her way. “And any interference would come ill from you or me where this one is concerned. And my bonny Mavis is but a bairn,” she added more gently, “and she’s in no danger from James Petrie, who is a well intentioned lad, and who has been ower weel brought up, and who is ower fond of siller and gentility, to have either roses or violets in his plan o’ life, unless they’re growing in a fine flowerpot, in somebody’s fine house. Marion Calderwood is no’ for the like of him.”
Her brother regarded her with anger so evidently struggling with astonishment in his face, that she expected hot words to follow. But he kept silence for a moment, and then he said quietly enough,—
“It seldom answers for ane to put his finger into another’s pie. There are few men so wise as to profit by a lesson from another man’s experience, and I doubt John Petrie is no’ ane o’ them.”
“And there’s few men, it’s to be feared, wise enough to take the best lesson from their ain experience,” said Miss Jean gravely. “And that is a sadder thing to say.”