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Coming down she had followed the wagon road, partly because the longer trail postponed a dreaded meeting, and partly because Jamie, being uncertain in his temper and inclined to panicky spells when things did not go just right with him, could not safely be trusted on the Slide trail, which was strange to him.
It was a shorter walk from Salem Street than it had been from his daughter's mansion, and poor Jamie had not so much time each day to calculate the chances of a letter being there. Alas! a glance of the eye sufficed. And the five minutes of hope between breakfast and the bank were all old Jamie had to carry him through the day, for her letters never arrived in the afternoon.
"No, Ranald, that's not it. I had heard whispers going about; and last Saturday, after we came home from John Adam's, and after I had told Elsie about Jamie, I ran up the street to old Eppie. You would have got nothing out of her, for she would not have liked to tell you; but she told me all about it." "What a creature you are, Turkey! Everybody tells you everything."
Jamie's no fule wi' the right sort, an' the yacht is a shentleman, an' the shentleman's the yacht, for it's the shentleman that pays whateffer." Captain Derrick became keenly interested. "The gentleman? The owner of the yacht, you mean?" Jamie nodded "Just that!" and proceeded to count out his store of new-laid eggs with great care as he placed them in the steward's basket. "What's his name?"
"This is your messmate, Jamie Dove," said the steward, pointing to a massive dark man, whose outward appearance was in keeping with his position as the Vulcan of such an undertaking as he was then engaged in. "You'll find him not a bad feller if you only don't cross him."
"Guid is no word for what Jamie has been to me, but he wasna born till after Joey died. When we got Jamie, Hendry took to whistlin' again at the loom, an' Jamie juist filled Joey's place to him. Ay, but naebody could fill Joey's place to me. It's different to a man. A bairn's no the same to him, but a fell bit o' me was buried in my laddie's grave. "Jamie an' Joey was never nane the same nature.
"I can always win when we have bread and butter races at tea. How do you like my new blouse? Nurse only finished it half an hour ago. She made it on purpose because you were coming. She said I had nothing else to put on." "Oh, Jamie, I'm sure she didn't!" exclaimed Jean. "You have a whole drawer full of clean blouses." "They're all dirty now, every one," confided Nell.
James was deputed a committee of one to suggest the subject to Jamie McMurtagh. Old Mr. Bowdoin had ideas of his own about educating young women above their station, but he was considerably more afraid of Jamie than was Mr. James.
I had a suspicion that the keeper's ferocity was assumed for the occasion, and that he was not such an ogre as I had considered him. Still, the prospect of poor little Jamie spending the night alone in the loft amongst the cats and rats was sufficiently dreadful when I thought of my midnight awaking in the barn. There seemed to be no help, however, especially when Turkey rose to say good night.
They could not know that Jamie, on the opposite side of the marsh, was at that moment in a snug shelter, and had been listening to their rifle shots, and supposing them to be the breaking of dead branches in the wind. Jamie was too small and too inexperienced to face and weather the storm on the marsh, unassisted, but Doctor Joe or David or even Andy might have crossed it.
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