“But cannot you see,” cried Edgar, with a start and sudden wince, interrupting him, “that my poor old grandmother would be wretched without Jeanie? And Jeanie herself is too delicate a creature for any such life. They must stay together. Surely, surely,” cried the young man, “when she is helpless who has done so much for everybody, it is not too much that we should provide for something beyond her mere existence—her happiness as well.”
Campbell had watched him very closely while he made this speech. The generous feeling with which he spoke brought the colour to Edgar’s cheek; he was unsuspicious of the meaning of the close scrutiny to which he was thus subjected, and made no effort to conceal this glow of natural emotion.
“If it’s Jeanie you’re meaning,” said Campbell, with a laugh and significant look, “no doubt there are other arrangements that might be thought of; and a good man’s aye the best thing, especially when he has enough to live on. If that’s your thought, my lad, I am not the one to say you nay.”
“If what is my thought?” said Edgar, bewildered.
I do not think the idea had ever occurred to him before, and I cannot describe the thrill of wounded pride with which he received this shock. Jeanie! A child—a creature altogether out of his sphere. Jeanie! with her pretty peasant manners, and poetic homely dialect, a little girl whom he could be kind to, as he would be kind to the maid who milked the cows, or the child who ran his errands! In all the course of the three painful years that were past, I do not think Edgar had received any such cutting and sudden blow. He realized all his own humiliation when he saw himself placed in the imagination of the neighbourhood by little Jeanie’s side—her cousin, her often companion, her so-possible wooer! The thought stiffened him up all at once to stone. He forgot even his usual consideration for the feelings of others.
“I have no thought of any kind in respect to Jeanie,” he said, coldly, “except in so far as concerns my grandmother. The two ought not to be separated. I cannot indeed allow them to be separated,” he added, still more proudly. “I have a little money, as you know, and if nobody else will do it, I must do it. I will make over to my grandmother my little income, such as it is. She can live and keep her favourite with her, if she has that.”
“Your—income!” Mr. Campbell could scarcely gasp out the words, so breathless was he and dumb-foundered. “Your—income! And what will you do yoursel’? But you mean an allowance; that’s a different matter,” he added, recovering himself. “You’ll give in proportion to what the rest of us give? Ay, ay. I can understand that.”
CHAPTER III.
Jeanie.
Edgar did not come home till the evening was considerably advanced. He went with Campbell to his house, and partook of the substantial family tea in the best parlour, which Mrs. Campbell, his aunt, called the drawing-room—so that it was late before he returned home.
“There’s a moon,” Campbell said. “Ye need be in no hurry. A young fellow in certain states of mind, as we a’ know, takes to moonlight walks like a duck to the water.”