Free Master of Glenkeith by Jean S. Macleod Page B

which existed between her and his grandfather after so short an acquaintance and she felt hurt he should underestimate her integrity in such a way.
    “The road along the burnside is easy enough,” he said almost indifferently. “It’s flat and not too bad a surface, and there won’t be any traffic to worry about.”
    “I—don’t suppose you could come, too?”
    She didn’t know why she had asked and she knew before he answered that he would refuse, but it was Saturday, and surely he didn't work on the farm every day of the week!
    “I’m going in to Ballater after lunch,” he said. “Meg has some shopping to do and I can order the cattle cake we need while I’m there.”
    “Why don’t you all go?” Daniel asked, but Tessa was quick to refuse this time.
    “No,” she objected firmly, “I’m taking you out!” Margaret and Andrew had obviously planned their own trip to Ballater, as they probably had done many times in the past before she had come to Glenkeith, and there was no reason why she should feel forlorn and deserted because they had failed to include her on this occasion. It might even be that Margaret was in love with Andrew— or he with her.
    The possibility had been lingering at the back of Tessa’s mind for a long time, but she had never allowed it to come fully into the light of day until now, and even now she had no way of telling whether her supposition was right or wrong. Neither Margaret nor Andrew was the type to wear their heart on their sleeve, she concluded.
    Their north-country reserve was something she had never encountered before, but she had come to respect it and, in some ways, to understand it. The warmth and sunshine of the land of her own birth tended to loosen the tongue and set the lighter emotions free, but up here the tempo of life was different, atuned to a slower rhythm and coloured by a certain grim necessity, a stern determination of purpose which, in years gone by, had wrested a meagre living from the soil and battled with the elements to obtain the means of keeping body and soul together.
    If Andrew was now reaping the benefit of that struggle, the inbred strength of character was still there. He came of a dour, fighting race whose emotions had been leashed by necessity, but underneath the granite-like exterior the flame of a fierce pride still burned. It had taken his ancestors to Culloden and the Covenanters to the stake. Whenever there was a cause to defend or an injustice to right or a determination firmly implanted in the individual breast, the way was clear and straight ahead.
    If Andrew had already made up his mind about his way in life, Tessa realized, nothing would deflect him from his purpose. And if he had made up his mind to marry Margaret, that, too, would come about in time.
    She glanced out of the window, thinking that some of the golden quality had disappeared from the sunlit fields, but Andrew and his grandfather were waiting and she followed Andrew to the door.
    “You do think it’s all right?” she questioned. “I wouldn’t like to think that I had influenced him to go out against his will.”
    He looked down at her with a strange smile in his eyes. “I hardly think you could do that with a Meldrum,” he said briefly. “They make up their minds for themselves and stand by the consequences.”
    “But what consequences could there be?”
    “None that I can see. Otherwise, I would not permit you to take him out. I don’t think you should attempt to go on to the moor,” he added. “It’s uphill most of the way after you leave the glen and my grandfather will be a
    heavy man to push.”
    “I’m not really so frail as I look,” Tessa protested. “Sometimes I had to work quite hard in Rome. We never had any money to employ servants. That’s why I wish I could do more here,” she added impulsively. “I could work in the house, Andrew—save Margaret a bit—let her get out with you more.”
    He turned to look at her, puzzled, it seemed,