‘What ails the woman?’ said the watchman on the pier. ‘There’s naething to make a wark about; they’ll get a bit heezy, but nae danger. It’ll be a son or a daughter ye’ve been seeing off.’
‘Oh, man, I’m thankful to you!’ said Janet. ‘Are they a’ for the same airt.’
‘They’re a’ for the far north,’ said the watchman, continuing his heavy march.
CHAPTER XLVIII
Janet had scarcely recovered the use of her tired limbs next morning and begun languidly to ‘redd up’ the cottage, with many anxious thoughts in her breast, when an unusual sound of masculine footsteps attracted her attention. She was in a very nervous, vigilant state, expecting she knew not what, although it had seemed as if everything had happened that could happen, now that Joyce had come—and gone so mysteriously: that she should come had always been a possibility before, but now was so no longer. The tramp of these imperative feet, not the slow tread of labouring men, attracted her anxious ear some distance off. She put away her brush and listened. The door stood open though the morning was cold, and a ray of pale and watery sunshine came in. Janet was afraid to look out, with an instant swift intuition and alarm lest somehow her child’s interest might be involved, and she could scarcely be said to be surprised when she saw the Captain, accompanied by an older grey-haired man whom she at once recognised as ‘the Cornel.’ ‘Eh, but I must be careful. She wasna with him after a’,’ said Janet to herself. She had been very tremulous and shaken with fatigue and anxiety, but she braced herself up in a moment and stood firmly on the defensive, whatever might be about to happen. The two gentlemen looked harassed and anxious. They came straight to the cottage door without any pause or hesitation. ‘Is Miss Joyce here?’ the Captain asked breathless, without even mainners to say good morning, as Janet remarked.
‘Na, Captain, she’s no here.’
‘My good woman,’ said the Colonel, breathless, too, ‘don’t be unkind, but tell us where my daughter is. We’ve come from London. I never denied your interest in her—never opposed her love for you. Bellendean will tell you. Let me see Joyce, for God’s sake!’
‘Colonel,’ said Janet, with a little tremble, ‘you should see her if she was in my keeping without such a grand plea. But she’s no here. I thought till this moment she was with—her ain folk.’
‘Don’t try to deceive us,’ cried Captain Bellendean, ‘we have traced her here.’ He was very much agitated to have forgotten his ‘mainners’ in this wonderful way.
‘Track or no track,’ said Janet, ‘you’ll get no lies frae me. Yes, she’s been here. There’s the chair she sat upon only yestreen and late at nicht wi’ Peter and me.’