“How foolish people are to permit their children to stray out on that Marsh!”
“It is the fault of the bairns themselves,” said Helen.
The banker remembered that Miss Swinton, Hope’s oracle, applauded our natural Scottish tongue, and it was rather a pretty word, “bairns.” In another person he would have thought it vulgar, perhaps, but no one could call that low voice, with its changeful modulations, vulgar, and he began to like listening to it.
“Jeanie is afraid her mother will be angry; but when she sees them so wet, she will forget their misdemeanour, I hope.”
Little Tammie had been tied up as well as it was possible to keep him comfortable, but the poor little fellow was very wet notwithstanding, and was getting weary and sleepy as he trudged along the road. Helen had insinuated him between the banker and herself, and so he was protected by the wonderful umbrella, and moreover had his thumb to suck consolation from, which melancholy pleasure the hapless Jeanie, walking on Helen’s other side, and laboriously gathering up her torn, wet frock, and thinking of what her mother would say, was quite deprived of.
“You seem fond of children, Miss Buchanan,” said the formal banker, after a considerable pause.
Helen began to forget the speciality of the case, in that this perplexed man was William Oswald’s father. She did not like, so sensitive and easily moved as she was herself, to see any one ill at ease beside her.
“I like them,” she said, frankly, “perhaps it is because I spend so much of my time among them; but I like their company.”
“And does it never weary you?” said the curious Mr Oswald.
Helen paused a moment—a sort of half-remembrance of the mood in which she left the school-room that day just floating like a cloud over the spirit which had shaken out its wings and was up again, singing in mid-heaven.