He rose, sick with the intolerable pain that a vivid remembrance of his loss always awakened, and there came to him suddenly a thought of Elsie Calderwood and her brother, the handsome mate of the “John Seaton,” now almost a year at sea. He sank into his chair again, as if some one had struck him a blow.
“That would be terrible!” said he, putting the thought from him with an angry pang.
The remembrance of Captain Harefield’s admiration, and the indifference with which his daughter had received it came back to him. Could there have been any thing besides the good sense for which her aunt gave her credit to account for her indifference? Could it be possible that young Calderwood could be in her thoughts?
He wearied himself thinking about it, long after the fire had gone out on the hearth, and he believed that he had convinced himself that his sudden fear was unreasonable and foolish. It could not be true.
“But true or not, I must keep my patience. It might have ended differently with—the other,—if I had taken a different way with him. I see that now. I might have led him, though I could not drive him; and I fancy that would be true of his sister as well.”
He went to his room with a heavy heart, but it grew lighter in the morning. He had been letting his fancy and his fears run away with his judgment, he thought, when he came into the breakfast-room, to find Jean and the lame boy interested and merry over a last year’s birds’ nest which Jean in her early walk had found in the wood. It was birds and birds’ nests that made the subject of conversation this morning, and Mr Dawson might well express his wonder that a lad, born and brought up in a great town, should have so much to say about them. Jean suggested the idea of his having played truant whiles, to advance his knowledge in this direction, and the lad only answered with a shrug which was half a confession. His holidays, at least, had all been spent in the fields and woods even in the winter-time.
“And if I could have my own way, all my days should be spent—in the woods and fields,” said he gravely, as if it were rather a sore subject with him.
Mr Dawson left the two considering the matter as though nothing of greater interest than birds and birds’ nests existed for either of them.
“A far safer subject than the dangers of the sea,” said he as he went his way.