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She saw him reach Jeanie and kneel down beside her. There was no hesitation about him. He was evidently deeply concerned. He slipped a persuasive arm about the child's huddled form. When Avery reached them, Jeanie's head in its blue woollen cap was pillowed against him and she was telling him sobbingly of her trouble. "I I caught my foot. I don't know how I did it.
He observed that the execution of the old woman, and the miserable fate of her daughter, seemed to have had a more powerful effect upon Jeanie's mind, than the usual feelings of humanity might naturally have been expected to occasion.
Lorimer was ill with grief and overwork. It seemed only natural that Avery should take up the burden of her care. Even the Vicar could say nothing against it. Avery sometimes wondered if Jeanie's death had pierced the armour of his self-complacence at any point.
That bride was Jeanie's grandmother; and when she died last year, she said, "Let little Jeanie have my lamour beads, and keep them as long as she lives." But what puzzled Jeanie was, how the amber came to be on the seashore; and, most of all, how the bees and mosses came inside of it. Should you like to know? If you would, that is one of Mother Nature's stories, and she will gladly tell it.
"That quite does away with the charm of it in my opinion," declared Piers. "I don't appreciate things when you can get 'em cheap." He moved over to Jeanie's sofa and sat down on the edge. Her soft eyes smiled a welcome, the little thin hand slipped into his. "I've been wishing for you all day long," she said. He leaned towards her. "Have you, my fairy queen? Well, I'm here at last."
Suffice it to say, that the gift was such as became the donors, and was suited to the situation of the receiver; that every thing was handsome and appropriate, and nothing forgotten which belonged to the wardrobe of a young person in Jeanie's situation in life, the destined bride of a respectable clergyman.
It required all Jeanie's watchful affection to prevent her from making known, in these paroxysms of affliction, much which it was of the highest importance that she should keep secret.
This colloquy had engaged Jeanie's attention so deeply, that it was not until it was over that she observed that the sashed door, which, we have said, led from the anteroom into the garden, was opened, and that there entered, or rather was borne in by two assistants, a young man, of a very pale and sickly appearance, whom they lifted to the nearest couch, and placed there, as if to recover from the fatigue of an unusual exertion.
Archibald, more calm and considerate, only desired the carriage to push forward; and it was not till they had got beyond sight of the fatal spectacle, that, seeing the deadly paleness of Jeanie's countenance, he stopped the carriage, and jumping out himself, went in search of the most obvious and most easily procured of Mrs. Dutton's pharmacopoeia a draught, namely, of fair water.
"I daresay ye are very right, father," was the general style of Jeanie's answer; "but ye maun come down to the Manse to your dinner the day. The bits o' bairns, puir things, are wearying to see their luckie dad; and Reuben never sleeps weel, nor I neither, when you and he hae had ony bit outcast." "Nae outcast, Jeanie; God forbid I suld cast out wi' thee, or aught that is dear to thee!"
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