The Twa Miss Dawsons. Margaret M. Robertson
that ‘put him up to it,’ ” said Jean.
“So the Petries may thank you for the honour of his company. That would rather spoil the honour to them, if they were to hear it,” said Mr. Dawson with a laugh.
“Well, very likely he may let them know it. I canna say much for his discretion,” said May with a shrug. “He asked me who made my sister’s gown, and you should have seen his face when I told him that she made it herself.”
“And didna he admire your gown?” asked her father, to the astonishment of the two Jeans, and indeed to May’s astonishment as well.
“Oh! yes. But then he said mine was just like other girls’ gowns, ‘very pretty and all that.’ But Miss Dawson’s was ‘unique,’ ” said May with a drawl. “And he said he would tell his sister.”
“And maybe she’ll want me to make one for her. She looks like one who cares about her gowns,” said Jean.
“She would be a queer kind o’ a woman if she didna,” said her father dryly.
Jean laughed.
“But there are degrees in that, as in other things. If Captain Harefield had spoken to me, I would have offered to make one for her.”
“And had the Captain nothing to say to you; Jean?” asked Mr. Dawson.
“He was feared at Jean,” May said laughing. “He just stood and looked at her.”
“He had plenty to say, if I had had the time to listen. He said his sister insisted on his coming north that he might keep out of mischief. He found Blackford House a bore rather,” said Jean imitating May’s drawl with indifferent success. Then she added—
“I beg your pardon, auntie. I ken ye dinna like it, and then I don’t do it well enough to make it worth my while, like May here.”
“My dear, ye baith do it only ower weel. And as to my no’ liking it—that’s neither here nor there. But I have kenned such a power o’ mockery give great pain to others, and bring great suffering sooner or later on those that had it. It canna be right, and it should be no temptation to a—Christian”, was the word that was on Miss Jean’s lips, but she changed it and said—“to a young gentlewoman.”
May looked at her sister and blushed and hung her head. Miss Jean so seldom reproved any one, that there was power in her words when she did speak; and May had yesterday sent some of her young companions into agonies of stifled laughter, by echoing the Captain’s drawl to his face.
“I’ll never do it again, auntie,” said she. “And besides,” said her sister, “Captain Harefield is not fair game. It’s not just airs and pride and folly with him, as it is with some folk we have seen; it is his natural manner.”
“But that is just what makes it so irresistible,” said May laughing. “To see him standing there so much at his ease—so strong and stately looking, and then to hear the things he says in his fine English words! It might be Simple Sandy himself,” and she went on to repeat some of his remarks, which probably lost nothing in the process. Even her aunt could not forbear smiling as she listened.
“Well, I must say I thought well of what I saw of him,” said Mr. Dawson. “I would hardly call him a sharp man, but he may have good sense without much surface cleverness. I had a while’s talk with him yesterday.”
“And he’s a good listener,” said Jean archly.
Her father laughed.
“I dare say it may have been partly that. He is a fine man as far as looks go, anyway.”
“Very. They all said that,” said May. “And Mavis said to me, ‘Eh, May, wouldna he do grand deeds if he were the same a’ through?’ He has the look of ‘grand deeds.’ But I have my doubts, and so had Mavis,” added May shaking her head.
“There are few men that I have ever met, the same a’ through. But who is Mavis that sets up with you to be a judge?” asked her father.
“Mavis!”—said May, hanging her head at her father’s implied reproof, as he supposed. “Mavis—is wee Marion—Marion Calderwood.”
“And we used—in the old days—to call her Mavis because she has a voice like a bird, and to ken her from our May, and Marion Petrie,” said Jean, looking straight at her father, and as she looked the shine of tears came to her bonny eyes.
“She is but a bairn,” said Miss Jean gravely.
Mr. Dawson’s face darkened as it always did at the mention of any name that brought back the remembrance of his son. May was not quick at noticing such signs, and she answered her aunt.
“A bairn! Yes, but ‘a bairn by the common,’ as Mrs. Petrie’s Eppie says. She is a clever little creature.”
“She is a far-awa’ cousin o’ Mrs. Petrie’s, and she’s learning some things from the governess of her bairns. But she might well have been spared on an occasion like yesterday, I would think,” said Miss Jean.
“Oh! all the bairns were there, as well as Marion. And she looked as a rose looks among the rest of the flowers.”
“As the violet looks in the wood, I would say,” added Jean. “She’ll be as bonny as her sister ever was.”
There was a moment’s silence, round the table, which Jean broke.
“She was asking when you would be home, aunt. She has gotten her second shirt finished, and she wants you to see it. She is very proud of it. I told her that you werena going to Portie, except on Sundays, for a month yet, and she must come here and let you see it.”
“Weel, she’ll maybe come. It was me that set her to shirt making. There is naething like white seam, and a good long stretch of it to steady a lassie like Marion. And if she learn to do it weel, it may stand her instead when other things fail.”
“White seam!” exclaimed May. “Not she! May Calderwood is going to educate herself, and keep a fine school—in London maybe—she has heard o’ such things. She’s learning German and Latin, no less! And I just wish you could hear her sing.”
“She markets for her mother, and does up her mother’s caps,” said Jean, “and she only learns Latin for the sake of helping Sandy Petrie, who is a dunce, and ay at the foot of the form.”
“She’s nae an ill lassie,” said Miss Jean softly, and the subject was dropped.
Phemie came in and the breakfast things were removed, and the girls went their several ways. Miss Jean, who was still lame from a fall she had got in the winter, went slowly to her chair near a sunny window and sat looking out upon the lawn. Mr. Dawson went here and there, gathering together some papers, in preparation for his departure to the town. He had something to say, his sister knew as well as if he had told her, and she would gladly have helped him to say it, as it did not seem to be easy for him to begin. But she did not know what he wished to speak about, or why he should hesitate to begin. At last, standing a little behind her, he said—
“It’s no’ like John Petrie and his wife to do a foolish thing, but they are doing it now. And their son Jamie just the age to make a fool o’ himself, for the sake o’ a bonny face. ‘A rose among the other flowers,’ no less, said May.”
“But Jean said better. ‘A violet in the wood.’ She is a modest little creature—though she has a strong, brave nature, and will hold her own with any Petrie o’ them a’. And as good as the best o’ them to my thinking.”
“Well, that mayna be the father’s thought, though it may be the son’s.”
“Dinna fash yoursel’ about Jamie Petrie. He’ll fall into no such trouble. It’s no’ in him?” added Miss Jean with a touch of scorn.
“I never saw the lad yet that hadna it in him to ken a bonny lass