“Don’t go away and leave us, Ronald, when no mortal can tell what an hour or a day may bring forth; and Sarah always so fond of you, and you such a near connection, the nearest we have in this countryside——”
“What should happen in a day or an hour, and of what service can I be?” he asked. “Of course, if I can be of any use——” but he shook his head. Ronald, like most people, had his mind fixed upon his own affairs.
“Oh, have ye no eyes?” cried Miss Beenie, “have none of ye any eyes? You are thinking of a young creature that has all her life before her, and time to set things right if they should go wrong; but nobody has a thought for my sister, that has been the friend of every one of you, that has never missed giving you a good advice, or putting you in the way you should go. And now here is she just slipping away on her last journey, and none of you paying attention! not one, not one!” she cried, wringing her hands, “nor giving a thought of pity to me that will just be left alone in the world.”
Miss Beenie, who had come out to the door with the departing visitor, threw herself down on the bench outside, her habitual seat in happier days, and burst into subdued weeping.
“I darena even cry when she can see me. It’s a relief to get leave to cry,” she said, “for, oh, cannot ye see, not one of ye, that she’s fading away like the morning mist and like the summer flowers?”
The morning mist and the summer flowers were not images very like Miss Dempster, who lay like an old tree, rather than any delicate and fragile thing; but Dr. Jardine, coming briskly up on his daily visit, was not susceptible to appropriateness of metaphor. He came up to Miss Beenie and patted her on the shoulder with a homely familiarity which a few months ago would have seemed presumption to the ladies of Rosebank.
“Maybe no,” he said, “maybe no, who can tell? And even if it was so, why should you be alone? I see no occasion—— Come up, and we’ll see how she is to-day.”
Ronald Sutherland, left alone, walked down the slope very solemnly, with his face as rigid as ever. Miss Dempster was his old and good friend, but, alas, he thought nothing of Miss Dempster.
“If she thinks it right, it must be so,” he was saying to himself. “If she thinks it’s right, am I the one to put any difficulty in the way?”