“Me! what should I ken?” said Jenny, turning her face away. “You’ll have gotten word? Nae doubt, being grand at the writing, he aye sends letters. What gars ye ask the like o’ me?”
Miss Janet caught her visitor’s hand, and turned her face towards the light with a terrified cry. “You may tell me—I ken you’ve seen him as weel.”
Jenny resisted for some time, keeping her head averted. At length, when she could struggle no longer, she fell into a little burst of sobbing. “I never would have telled ye. I didna come to make you desolate—but I canna tell a lee. I saw him in the dark last nicht, just ae moment, glancing in at the window—and when I gaed to the door, he was gane.”
Half an hour after, very drearily Jenny took her way down the hill—and looking back as the early twilight began to darken on her path, she saw Miss Janet’s wistful face commanding the way. The twilight came down heavily—the clouds dipt upon the hill—drizzling rains began to fall, carrying down with them light dropping showers of half-detached and dying leaves—but still Miss Janet leaned upon the dyke, and turned her anxious eyes to the hilly footpath, watching, with many a sob and shiver, for Randall—in the flesh or in the spirit. Surely, if he revealed himself to strangers, he might come to her.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
After this there fell some very still and quiet days upon Mrs Laurie’s cottage. Everything went on languidly; there was no heart to the work which Menie touched with dreamy fingers; there was something subdued and spiritless in her mother’s looks and movements; and even Jenny’s foot rang less briskly upon her earthen floor. They did not know what ailed them, nor what it was they looked for; but with a brooding stillness of expectation, they waited for something, if it were tempest, earthquake, or only a new glow of sunshine out of the kindly skies.
Was it a spirit? Asking so often, you make your cheek pale, Menie Laurie; you make your eyelids droop heavy and leaden over your dim eyes. Few people come here to break the solitude, and we all dwell with our own thoughts, through these still days, alone.
“Menie, you are injuring yourself; we will take a long walk, and see some people to-day,” said Mrs Laurie. “Come, it is quite mild—it will do us both good; we will go to the manse to see Miss Johnston, and then to Woodlands and Burnside. Put up your papers—we will take a holiday to-day.”
Menie’s heavy eyes said faintly that she cared nothing about Miss Johnston, about Woodlands or Burnside; but Menie put aside her papers slowly, and prepared for the walk. They went out together, not saying much, though each sought out, with labour and difficulty, something to say. “I wonder what ails us?” said Menie, with a sigh. Her mother made no answer. It was not easy to tell; and speaking of it would do more harm than good.
A hazy day—the sky one faint unvaried colour, enveloped in a uniform livery of cloud; a faint white mist spread upon the hills; small invisible rain in the air, and the withered leaves heavily falling down upon the sodden soil.