“This week,” he said. “I don’t want to lose any more time; I have lost all my summer. It would have been better for me if I had never come home. I would have missed you, Jeanie; but then I might have avoided other things that can never be got rid of now.”
“Oh!” she said, her heart wrung with the suggestion, pleased with the regret, wounded with the comparison; “I wonder if you would say just the same of me to her as of her to me?”
“How could I, when you are so little like each other?” he said. “But, Jeanie, let us think of ourselves; let us not bring in her, or any one. My bonnie Jeanie, when I come back I shall always find you here?”
“I canna tell—the cobbling’s no just a grand trade, and what will feed ane does not aye serve two. I think I will maybe take a new place—at the New-Year.”
“But not to take you from the Kirkton, Jeanie—not to take you away from me?”
“If it was to take me far, far away—to London, or to America, or New Zealand, where so many are going—and I wish my faither would think of it,” she said, softly. “Oh! I’ve great reason to pray, ‘Lead me not into temptation,’ for I would be far, far better away.”
“You are not like yourself to-night, Jeanie. Why should you lecture me to-night, just when you have to say good-bye to me—good-bye for a little while?”
“It would be far, far better if it was good-bye forever,” she said; “but eh, Rob, I canna understand mysel’. I would be glad if it was me that was to go—ay would I. I would go to New Zealand, if my faither would but come, the morn; but when it’s you, a’ my strength fails me, my heart goes sinking away from me, my head begins to turn round. I know it’s right, but I canna bide it, Rob!”
“My poor little Jeanie,” he said, caressingly. “And I cannot bide it, if you speak of what a man likes; but it is better for me that I should not be wasting my time. I should be doing some work that will be worth a man’s while. What is money, Jeanie? I shall have plenty of money. But I ought to be known, I ought to think of my name.”
“Oh, that’s true,” she said. “I know well you’re no a lad to spend your life in a quiet country place. And that just shows me more and more the difference between you and me, Rob. I shouldna call you Rob— I should say Maister Glen.”