Chapter One.

“Auld Miss Jean.”

Saughleas was not a large estate, nor were the Dawsons gentlefolks, in the sense generally accepted in the countryside.

It was acknowledged that both the mother and the wife of the new laird had had good blood in their veins; but George Dawson himself, had been, and, in a sense, still was, a merchant in the High-street of Portie. He was banker and ship-owner as well, and valued the reputation which he had acquired as a business man, far more than he would ever be likely to value any honour paid to him as the Laird of Saughleas.

He had gotten his land honestly, as he had gotten all else that he possessed. He had taken no advantage of the necessities of the last owner, who had been in his power, in a certain sense, but had paid him the full value of the place; and not a landed proprietor among them all had more pride in the name and fame of his ancestry, than he had in the feet that he had been the maker of his own fortune, and that no man, speaking truth, could accuse him, in the making of it, of doing a single mean or dishonest deed.

His mother “had come o’ gentle bluid,” but his father had been first a common sailor and then the mate of a whaling ship that sailed many a time from the little Scottish east coast harbour of Portie, and which at last sailed away never more to return.

His widow lived through years of heart-sickness that must have killed her sooner than it did, but that her two fatherless bairns needed her care. They were but bairns when she died, with no one to look after them but a neighbour who had been always kind to them. The usual lot awaited them, it was thought. The laddie must take to the sea, as most of the laddies in Portie did, and the lassie must get “bit and sup” here and there among the neighbours, till she should be able to do for herself as a servant in some house in the town.

But it happened quite otherwise. Whatever the Dawsons had been in old times, there was good stuff in them now, it was said. For “Wee Jean Dawson,” as she was called, with few words spoken, made it clear that she was to make her own way in the world. She was barely fifteen at that time, and her brother was two years younger, and if she had told her plans and wishes, she would have been laughed at, and possibly effectually hindered from trying to carry them out. But she said nothing.

The rent of the two rooms which the children and their mother had occupied, was paid to the end of the year, and the little stock of pins and needles, and small wares generally, by the sale of which the mother had helped out the “white seam,” her chief dependence, was not exhausted, and Jean, declining the invitation of their neighbour to take up their abode with her in the mean time, quietly declared her intention of “biding where she was for a while,” and no one had the right to say her nay. Before the time to pay another quarter’s rent came round, it was ready, and Jean had proved her right to make her own plans, having shown herself capable of carrying them out when they were made.

How she managed, the neighbours could not tell, and they watched her with doubtful wonder. But it was not so surprising as it seemed to them. She was doing little more than she had been doing during the last two years of her mother’s life under her mother’s guidance. She had bought and sold, she had toiled late and early at the white seam, when her mother was past doing much, and had made herself busy with various trifles in cotton and wool, with crochet-needle and knitting-pins, when white seam failed them, and that was just what she was doing now.

And she went on bravely. She accepted offered favours gratefully, but sooner or later, she always repaid them. If Bell Ray, the fishwife, left a fresh haddock at the door as she passed, she was sure to carry with her some other day a pair of little socks, or a plaything for the bairnie at home. And if Mrs Sims, next door, kindly took the heaviest part of the girl’s washing into her hands, she got in return her Sunday “mutch” starched and ironed and its broad borders set up in a way that excited the admiring wonder of all.

The two rooms were models of neatness as they had always been. George was comfortably clothed, at least he was never ragged, he very rarely went hungry, and he went to the school as regularly, and to as good purpose, as the banker’s son, or the minister’s son, and was as obedient to Jean as he had been to his mother in the old days. Jean was neat, and more than neat in her black print frock and holland apron—it cannot be said of the first half year that she was never hungry. For many a time the portion set aside for the dinner of two was only enough for one, and it cost Jean less pain to go without her share than to let the growing laddie be stinted of his needed food. But after the first half year, they had enough, and some to spare to those who had less, and much as Jean sometimes needed money to add to her stock in trade, she had been too wisely taught by her mother, not to know that a sufficient quantity of simple and wholesome food was absolutely necessary for health of body and of mind, and therefore necessary for success in life.

Of course she was successful. In after years, when she used to go back to this time in her thoughts and in her talk, she attributed her success in business, chiefly to two things—her silence, and her determination never to fall into debt. To the talk which “neebour folk” fell into in her little shop, she listened, but she rarely added her word; and she so ordered matters that it never became, as it very easily might have been, a centre of gossip and a cause of trouble in the neighbourhood. As to falling into debt, her determination against it hindered her for a while; but when the “big” merchants of Portie came to know her and her ways, they gave her the benefit of the lowest prices in sales, so trifling to them, but so important to her. They helped her with advice, and put some advantages as to fashions and fabrics in her way; and best of all, when Geordie’s schooling was supposed to be at an end, one of them took him into his employment in a humble capacity indeed, but his rise to the place of honour behind the counter, and then to the book-keeper’s desk, was more rapid than generally happens in such a case as his.

Before Jean was seven and twenty years of age, she and her brother were equal partners in a fairly prosperous business established by her in the High-street. After this fortune was secure in the course of time.

They were equal partners for a good many years, but gradually, as their resources increased, and new ways of employing energy and capital were open to the brother, this was changed. With her usual prudence, Jean refused to engage in risks which she had not sufficient knowledge to guide or strength to control, and a change was made in their business relations, and each continued to prosper in the chosen way.

As time went on, Jean ruled well her brother’s home and helped him in many ways; but she did not, as had been predicted of her, grow into a mere hard business woman—seeing nothing so clearly as the main chance, and loving money itself better than the comfort that money may bring. It was they who knew her least, or who knew her only in her capacity of business woman, who feared this for her. The people who had watched and wondered at her early efforts and success, the neighbours, and the fisher wives who had