



Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England




The Twa Miss Dawsons
By Margaret Murray Robertson
Published by Hodder and Stoughton, 27 Paternoster Row, London.
This edition dated 1880.

The Twa Miss Dawsons, by Margaret Murray Robertson.

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THE TWA MISS DAWSONS, BY MARGARET MURRAY ROBERTSON.

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,