In all matters connected with the management of the estate he took especial pains to claim her attention and interest. She tramped with him over the wet autumn fields in all weathers, and listened to his plans for the improvement of the place in the way of dikes and ditches and drains, and to plans that went further than these—plans which it would take years to carry out well and wisely. Her interest was real for the moment, and soon it became eager and intelligent as well. She not only listened to him, but she discussed, and suggested, and even differed from him in various matters, and held to her own opinions in a way that certainly did not displease him.
She tired of it all sometimes, however, and though she permitted no sign of it to appear to her father, she could not always hide it from her sister.
“And what is the good of it all? You cannot surely be vain enough to think that you are doing any good, or that papa cares to have you tramping about in the wet and the wind.”
“Oh, I like it! And I may as well do it as any thing else. As to papa—yes, I think he likes it. I am better than no one to speak to, and—oh yes, I like it!”
“It is all nonsense!” said May with a shrug. “As for papa, he might enjoy it, if it were Peter Stark, or John Stott, or any one that could understand him, or give him a sensible answer;—but you!—What is the use of it?—and just look at your shoes and stockings!”
Jean looked down, as she was bidden, at her feet, and her soiled petticoats.
“They are wet,” said she, “and dirty.”
“And tell me if you can, what is the good of it all?”
“It has made me hungry, and it will make me sleep, perhaps. And the best reason for it is, that I like it—as well as any thing.”
She went away to change her wet things, and came back in her pretty house dress with a knot of gay ribbon at her throat, looking wonderfully bright and bonny her father thought as he came in at the hall door, and so he noticed all the more readily, perhaps, how white and changed she looked afterwards. When he also had changed his wet things, and came in to sit down, she was standing in the darkening room, looking out at the window, leaning on the ledge as though she were tired, and she did not turn round as he passed her to take his usual place at the fireside.