Arthur Townshend groaned.
"What sort of an idea had Aunt Alice given you of me?"
"Quite unintentionally," Elizabeth said, "she made you sound rather a worm. Not a crawling worm, you understand, but a worm that reared an insolent head, that would think it a horrid bore to visit a manse in Glasgow—a side-y worm."
"Good Lord," said Mr. Townshend, stooping to pick up Elizabeth's needlework which in her excitement had fallen on the rug, "this is not Aunt Alice——"
"No," said Elizabeth, "it's my own wickedness. The fact is, I was jealous—Aunt Alice seemed so devoted to you, and quoted you, and admired everything about you so much, and I thought that in praising you she was 'lychtlying' my brothers, so of course I didn't like you. Yes, that's the kind of jealous creature I am."
The door opened, and Ellen came in with a tray on which stood glasses, a jug of milk, a syphon, and a biscuit-box. She laid it on a table beside her mistress and asked if anything else was needed and on being told "No," said good-night and made her demure exit.
"Pretend you've known me seven years, and put a log on the fire," Elizabeth asked her guest.
He did as he was bid, and remained standing at the mantelpiece looking at the picture which hung above it.
"Your mother, isn't it?" he asked. "She was beautiful; Aunt Alice has often told me of her."
He looked in silence for a minute, and then went back to his chair and lit another cigarette.
"I never knew my mother, and I only remember my father dimly. I was only her husband's nephew, but Aunt Alice has had to stand for all my home-people, and no one knows except myself how successful she has been."
"She is the most golden-hearted person," said Elizabeth. "I don't believe she ever has a thought that isn't kind and gentle and sincere. I am so glad you had her—and that she had you. One can't help seeing what you have meant to her...." Then a spark of laughter lit in Elizabeth's grey eyes.
"Don't you love the way her sentences never end? just trail deliciously away ... and her descriptions of people?—'such charming people, such staunch Conservatives and he plays the violin so beautifully.'"
Arthur Townshend laughed in the way that one laughs at something that, though funny, is almost too dear to be laughed at.
"That is exactly like her," he said. "Was your mother at all like her sister?"
"Only in heart," said Elizabeth. "Mother was much more definite. People always said she was a 'sweet woman,' but that doesn't describe her in the least. She was gentle, but she could be caustic at times: she hated shams. That picture was painted before her marriage, but she never altered much, and she never got a bit less lovely. I remember once we were all round her as she stood dressed to go to some wedding, and Alan said, 'Are you married, Mums?' and when she said she was, he cried consolingly, 'But you would do again.'... I sometimes wonder now how Mother liked the work of a minister's wife in Glasgow. I remember she used to laugh and say that with her journeys ended in Mothers' Meetings. I know she did very well, and the people loved her. I can see her now coming in from visiting in the district, crying out on the drabness of the lives there, and she would catch up Buff and dance and sing with him and say little French nursery-songs to him, like a happy school-girl. Poor little Buff! He doesn't know what a dreadful lot he is missing. Sometimes I think I spoil him, and then I remember 'his mother who was patient being dead.'"
The fire had fallen into a hot red glow, and they sat in silence looking into it.
Presently the door opened, and Mr. Seton came in. He came to the fire and warmed his hands, remarking, "There's a distinct touch of frost in the air to-night, and the glass is going up. I hope it means that you are going to have good weather, Mr. Townshend."
He helped himself to a glass of milk and a biscuit.
"Elizabeth, do you know what that brother of yours has done? I happened to take down The Pilgrim's Progress just now, and found that the wretched little fellow had utterly ruined those fine prints by drawing whiskers on the faces of the most unlikely people."
Mr. Seton's mouth twitched.
"The effect," he added, "is ludicrous in the extreme."
His listeners laughed in the most unfeeling way, and Elizabeth explained to Mr. Townshend that when Buff was in fault he was alluded to as "your brother," as if hers was the sole responsibility.
"Well, you know," said Mr. Seton, as he made the window secure, "you spoil the boy terribly."
Elizabeth looked at Arthur Townshend, and they smiled to each other.
CHAPTER X
"If ever you have looked on better days,
If ever been where bells have knolled to church."
As You Like It.
Mr. Seton's church was half an hour's walk from his house, and the first service began at nine-forty-five, so Sabbath morning brought no "long lie" for the Seton household. They left the house at a quarter-past nine, and remained at church till after the afternoon service, luncheon being eaten in the "interval."
Thomas and Billy generally accompanied them to church, not so much from love of the sanctuary as from love of the luncheon, which was a picnic-like affair. Leaving immediately after it, they were home in time for their two-o'clock Sunday dinner with "Papa."
Elizabeth had looked forward with horror to the prospect of a Sunday shut in with the Arthur Townshend of her imagination, but the actual being so much less black than her fancy had painted she could view the prospect with equanimity, hoping only that such a spate of services might not prove too chastening an experience for a worldly guest.
Sabbath morning was always rather a worried time for Elizabeth. For one thing, the Sabbath seemed to make Buff's brain more than usually fertile in devising schemes of wickedness, and then, her father would not hurry. There he sat, calmly contemplative, in the study while his daughter implored him to remember the "intimations," and to be sure to put in that there was a Retiring Collection for the Aged and Infirm Ministers' Fund.
Mr. Seton disliked a plethora of intimations, and protested that he had already six items.
"Oh, Father," cried his exasperated daughter, "what is the use of saying that when they've all to be made?"
"Quite true, Lizbeth," said her father meekly.
Mr. Seton always went off to church walking alone, Elizabeth following, and the boys straggling behind.
"I'm afraid," said Elizabeth to Mr. Townshend, as they walked down the quiet suburban road with its decorous villa-residences—"I'm afraid you will find this rather a strenuous day. I don't suppose in Persia—and elsewhere—you were accustomed to give the Sabbath up wholly to 'the public and private exercises of God's worship'?"
Mr. Townshend confessed that he certainly had not.
"Oh, well," said Elizabeth cheeringly, "it will be a new experience. We generally do five services on Sunday. My brother Walter used to say that though he never entered a church again, his average would still be higher than most people's. What king was it who said he was a 'sair saunt for the Kirk'? I can sympathise with him."
They drifted into talk, and became so engrossed that they had left the suburbs and had nearly reached the church before Elizabeth remembered the boys and stopped and looked round for them.
"I don't see the boys.