"By and by. That's a long time. Tell us now, Jean, please do."
After tea was the best time to catch Farmer Thompson at leisure. At that hour he usually treated himself to half an hour's rest and a pipe in the porch, and there Jean found him on this particular night.
"Mr. Gillicraft paid me this to-day," she said, handing him the roll of bills.
"Ay. They're prompt with it, but that's but fair. Well, my lass—it's a good bit of money. What'll ye do with your gains?"
"I'll tell you something I was thinking of, father—if you approve, that is. It's a great many years since mother and you came from Scotland here, and she's never been home since, you know."
"Twenty-one years come October. 'Tis a long time, truly," replied her father, letting a curl of smoke escape from the corner of his mouth.
"Well—there was an advertisement in the paper, awhile ago, about a steamboat line, the Anchor Line, it's called, I think, which goes to Glasgow, and it said great reductions for this summer, and people could go and come back in the second cabin for forty-five dollars. Now if mother'd like it, and I know she would, she and I could go for what I've got, and she could visit grandmother, and there'd be thirty dollars left for other things, such as going down to New York and from Glasgow to Greenock. Grandmother lives in Greenock, doesn't she? Do you think it's a good plan, father?"
"Well, it depends on your mother. If she likes to go, I'd say nought against it," replied her father. Then, his habitual Scotch caution relaxing, he added: "You're a good lass, Jean. A good, dutiful lass to think of this. Your granny's an old woman by now, and I've known this long back that your mother was wearying to see her again before she dies, and I'd have sent her myself, only I never could see the way to do it. Scotland's a long travel, and money's none too plenty now-a-days with any of us. I'll just smoke my pipe out, and then you and I'll go in and talk it over with mother."
Mrs. Thompson heard the proposal with a tremulous mixture of bewilderment and joy. She was not a strong woman, and fever-and-ague, that insidious scourge of so many country districts, had struck at the hill-farm the year before, and left her weakened and languid for months afterward. The neighbors were told the new plan, and preparations set on foot at once, that Jean might lose as little as possible of her brief vacation time. Everybody was interested and excited. Mrs. Parsons brought warm knitted hoods to be worn at sea; Mrs. Wright, a waterproof clothes-bag and a box of Ayer's Pills; Mrs. Gillicraft two linen catchalls for state-room use, with pockets, and pincushions well furnished with pins.
"I envy you," said Maria Parsons, who was Jean's special friend. "I always was wild to travel, but there! I don't suppose I ever shall, so long as I live. Some folks are born lucky. You'll have a splendid time, Jean."