“Yes, we can only wait. I am glad he went with—Willie, who will be good to him. That is all my comfort.”
“Yes, Willie will stand his friend whatever happens.” There was no more said, for Marion came dancing in. “Yes, Mavis dear, your mother says you may come home with me. I must go and see Aunt Jean first, and you will find me there.”
“And, Miss Dawson, take a good rest, and we’ll go round by the sea shore. It is so long since I had a walk with you. See the sun is coming out after all.”
“Well,” said Jean nodding and smiling. Then she shook hands with Mrs Calderwood, but they did not linger over their good-byes. Marion turned a wistful look to her mother’s face when they were alone. But her mother would not meet it, but hastened her away.
Jean turned towards the pier head, to let the wind from the sea blow her hot cheeks cool, before she came into her aunt’s sight, and as she went she was saying to herself,—
“It was May she was thinking about I could not speak, because May has never spoken to me. And after all—I dare say she is right. ‘The sense and courage to keep silence.’ No wonder that his mother should say that, who can never forget her poor bonny Elsie.”
It was mid-day—the hour when the usual frequenters of the pier head were home at their dinners, and Jean stood alone for some time looking out to the sea, and thinking her own thoughts. They were troubled thoughts enough. “The sense and courage to keep silence.” Her temptation was not to speech. It was sense and courage to speak that she needed.
Her aunt too had told her that silence was best—that foolish fancies, that might have vanished otherwise, sometimes took shape and became troubles when put into words. All at once it came into Jean’s mind, that it could not have been of her brother’s loss, but of something quite different that her aunt had been thinking when she said this. Could it have been of May and Willie Calderwood?
“She too must think that my father would never yield, and that it would be just the same sad story over again. But still, I am not sure that silence is best.”
By and by those who worked or loitered on the pier head, came dropping back in twos and threes, and Jean knew that unless she would keep her aunt’s dinner waiting she must go. Miss Jean had said to herself that the first word spoken would reveal to the girl her own sad secret. But it had not done so—or she would not acknowledge it—even though the remembrance of Mrs Calderwood’s words and manner brought a sudden hot colour to her face.