"You are very kind, but I think I am better here. Mrs Hume has asked me to come to the manse, and Mrs Beaton would like me to go to her.

You are all very kind, but I think it is better for me just to bide where I am, and keep myself busy for the present."

Mrs Esselmont sat thinking earnestly for several minutes. Then she said gravely:

"Allison, listen to me for a moment, and put out of your thoughts all that I hose been saying. You have been long enough under my roof to know something of me. You know that I am growing an old woman now, and that I am much alone, having no one very near to me who could be with me always. I am often very lonely. One daughter is taken up with the care of her large family, and has other claims upon her besides, and my Mary is over the sea. Will you come to me, Allison? Not as a servant,--as a companion and friend. I like you greatly, my dear. I may say I love you dearly. Will you come to me?"

She held out her hand. Allison took it in both hers, and stooping, she kissed it, and her tears fell upon it.

"If my brother did not need me I would come with good will. But I must go to him when he is ready for me."

"Will you come to me till he sends for you? If he were to marry he would not need you. You would be happy with me, I am sure, my dear."

"That you should even wish me to come, makes me very glad, but I can say nothing now."

"Well, think about it. We would suit one another, my dear. And we might have our Marjorie with us now and then."

Mrs Esselmont went back to Firhill, and Allison went daily to the infirmary again. She kept herself busy, as was best for her, and no one came to trouble her any more with counsel or expostulation. She did her work and thought her own thoughts in peace.

"I will wait patiently till this troublesome business is settled, and then I will know what I may do. I am not losing my time and I can wait."

Having quite made up her mind as to her duty with regard to "this troublesome business," she put it out of her thoughts and grew cheerful and content, and able to take the good of such solace or pleasure as came in her way.

Robert Hume was a help to her at this time. He looked in upon her often, and gave her such items of news as came to him from the manse or from Nethermuir. He brought her books now and then, to improve her mind and pa.s.s the time, he told her, and Allison began, to her own surprise, to take pleasure in them, such as she had taken in books in the days of her youth, before all things went wrong with them, and all the world was changed.

A letter came from her brother at last. It was dated at a strange place in the West, and it was not a cheerful letter.

"It is a long time since I wrote to you," he said. "I had no heart to write. I was grieved and angry, and I would only have hurt you with my words. But I have not made so much of my own life that I should venture to find fault with what you are doing with yours. As to my plans that you asked about, I have none now. I may wait a while before I think of getting a home of my own, since I am not like to have any one to share it with me. Oh! Allie, how is it that all our fine hopes and plans have come to nothing? It was your duty, you thought, to take the step you have taken. I cannot see it so. Having once gone to him, you can never leave him till death comes to part you. You might as well have gone at the first as at the last, and you would have saved yourself the trouble of years. But it is useless to say more--"

Then he went on to tell her that he had come West to see the country-- and a fine country it was, grand for growing grain. He had not made up his mind to stay in it. "It is a fine country, but it has a dreary look to me. There is not a hill to be seen far or near, and in some parts, not a tree for scores of miles. I hardly think I will stay here long."

Allison read all this with painful misgivings. Willie alone and discouraged, and alas! open to temptation, perhaps, as he had been before--how would it end? Her heart sank within her, and she said to herself, that there was no need for her to wait for a settlement of that troublesome business. There were those who could settle it without her help, and she would away to her brother.

His name was signed at the end of the page, but she turned the leaf over and read a few lines more.

"I have gotten a letter from John Beaton, and I have made up my mind to go back to Barstow. John says he is going home to bring out his mother, and he will give you all the news--so no more at present."

Allison's heart was lightened as she read.

"There cannot be much wrong with him since he is going back again," she thought, "and I can wait patiently till his friend comes, to hear more."

She had not long to wait. One night, when she came home in the early gloaming, she found Mrs Robb standing at the door.

"Mr Robert is in the room," said she, "and a friend with him. He asked for you, and I thought ye might maybe like to take off your cap and change your gown before you went in to them."

"I may as well," said Allison. "It is some one from Nethermuir, I suppose," she thought as she went up the stair.

So she came down quite unprepared to find John Beaton standing in the middle of the room, with his eyes fixed on the door. They stood for a moment looking at one another, and then their hands met, but not a word of greeting pa.s.sed between them. Then Allison sat down, and John took a turn up and down the room.

"I heard from my brother that you were coming home for your mother, but I did not think it was to be so soon," said Allison.

"It is the best time for me to leave my work. It is rather early in the season for my mother, I am afraid. But the voyage is shorter than it used to be, and she can have every comfort."

"She will be glad to go," said Allison.

"Yes, for some reasons. But at her age, changes are neither easy nor welcome. Still, I am sure she will be glad to go."

"You have something to tell me about my brother," said Allison.

"Yes, I have much to tell you--and nothing but good."

"I was thankful when I heard that he was to go back again to Mr Strong's house. It has been like home to him a long time. Did he send a letter to me?"

"Yes--but it is a very little one. I am to tell you all the news," said John, taking from his pocketbook a tiny, folded paper. Allison opened it and read:

"Dear Allie, it was all a mistake; it was me she cared for all the time.

Oh! Allie, you must love her dearly for my sake."

It seemed to take Allison a good while to read it, short as it was.

When at last she looked up and met John's eyes, a sudden rush of colour made her hide her face in her hands.

"Don't be sorry, Allie; you would not if you knew all," said John.

"Oh! no. It is not that I am sorry. But--he will not need me now. Oh!

I am not sorry. I am glad for him." But her voice trembled as she said it.

"Will he not need his sister? You would not say so if you knew what the thought of you has been to him all these years. You have not seen your brother for a long time, but it is you who have made a man of him, for all that."

"Have I made a man of him? It has been with your good help then."

"Yes, I think I may have helped him. We have been friends, and more, ever since we met that night by the lake sh.o.r.e."

"Ah! he needed a friend then. I seemed to forget my fears for him, after I heard that you had found him. I do not know how to thank you for all you have been to him."

"I will tell you how," said John. But he did not. He rose and walked up and down again. After a little he sat down beside her, and had more to say. He spoke of his first meeting with her brother, of Willie's illness, and of the good fortune that came to them both on the day when they took shelter from the rain in Mr Strong's barn. He told her much more than that. Some things she had heard before, and some things she heard now for the first time. She listened to all with a lightened heart, and more than once the happy tears came to her eyes. And when John ended thus, "You will be proud of your brother yet, Allison," she put out her hand, and John took it, and, for a moment, held it closely.

Before Allison came in John had said to Robert:

"You are not to go away; I have nothing to say to Allison Bain to-night that all Nethermuir might not hear."

But for the moment he wished the words unsaid. A wild desire "to put all to the touch" and know his fate a.s.sailed him. He spoke quietly enough, however, when he went on to tell, in answer to Allison's questions, why Willie had gone away so suddenly to the West.

He had always intended to go out there some time, but with the suddenness of his going Mr Strong had something to do. It never seemed to have come into the father's mind that his little Elsie was not a child any longer, and when he began to notice the look that came into Willie's eyes when they lighted on her, he was startled first, and then he was angry, and he let his anger be seen, which was foolish. I am afraid he spoke to Elsie herself, which was more foolish still. For she became conscious, and shy, and ill at ease, and these two, who up to that time had been like brother and sister, had little to say to one another. When Elsie was sent away to visit an aunt, Willie grew restless and angry, and, in a moment when something had vexed him, he told Mr Strong that he had made up his mind to go West.

"Mr Strong said 'all right' a little too readily perhaps, and gave the lad no time to reconsider his decision, and so Willie went away. It happened when I was in another town, where I had building going on. I heard of the matter first from a letter which Willie sent me, and hurried back as soon as possible, hoping to induce him to wait for a while, that I might go with him, as I had always meant to do. I was too late. But it has all ended well. Willie was glad to get home again, and they were all glad to have him home. Mr Strong had missed the lad more than he had been willing to confess, even to himself."

"And is that what you call ending well? Is that to be the end?" said Robert, speaking for the first time.

John laughed. "That is as far as it has gone yet, and it as well as well can be. We must wait for the rest."