Mr. M'Cann spoke with a broad West Country accent. He said it helped him to get nearer the Heart of the People.
"Yes, Mrs. Christie," he bellowed, "I'm alone. Lizzie's washin' the weans, for the girrl's gone off in a tantrum. She meant to come to-night, for she likes a party—Lizzie has never lost her girrlish ways—but when I got back this evening—I've been down in Ayrshire addressin' meetin's for the Independent Candidate. What meetin's! They just hung on my lips; it was grand!—when I got back I found the whole place turned up, and Lizzie and the weans in the kitchen. It's a homely house ours, Miss Seton. So I said to her, 'I'll just wash my dial and go off and make your apologies'—and here I am!"
Here indeed he was, and Elizabeth wanted so much to know why he had not stayed at home and helped his little overworked wife that she felt if she stayed another moment she must ask him, so she fled from temptation, and found a vacant chair beside Kirsty.
Archie Christie strolled up to speak to her; he rather admired Elizabeth—'distangay-looking girl' he called her in his own mind.
"Frightfully clerical show here to-night," he said.
Elizabeth agreed; then she pinched Kirsty's arm and asked her to introduce Mr. Hamilton.
It did not take Elizabeth many minutes to make up her mind that Kirsty had found a jewel. Mr. Hamilton might not be much to look at, but goodness shone out of his eyes. His quiet manner, his kind smile, the simple directness of his speech were as restful to Elizabeth after the conversational efforts of Mr. M'Cann as a quiet haven to a storm-tossed mariner.
"I haven't got a church yet," he told her, "though I've been out a long time. Somehow I don't seem to be a very pleasing preacher. I'm told I'm too old-fashioned, not 'broad' enough nor 'fresh' enough for modern congregations."
Elizabeth struck her hands together in wrath.
"Oh!" she cried, "those hateful expressions! I wonder what people think they mean by them? When I hear men sacrificing depth to breadth or making merry-andrews of themselves striving after originality, I long for an old-fashioned minister—one who is neither broad nor fresh, but who magnifies his office. That is the proper expression, isn't it? You see I'm not a minister's daughter for nothing!... But don't let's talk about worrying things. We have heaps of nice things in common. First of all, we have Kirsty in common."
So absorbing did this topic prove that they were both quite aggrieved when Mr. Christie came to ask Elizabeth to sing, and with many fair words and set phrases led her to the piano.
"And what," he asked, "do you think of Christina's choice?"
Elizabeth replied suitably; and Mr. Christie continued:
"Quite so. A fine fellow—cultured, ye know, cultured and a purfect gentleman, but a little lacking in push. Congregations like a man who knows his way about, Miss Seton. You can't do much in this world without push."
"I dare say not. What shall I sing? Will you play for me, Kirsty?"
At nine o'clock the company went down to supper.
Mrs. Christie, to whom as to Chuchundra the musk-rat, every step seemed fraught with danger, said she would not venture downstairs again, but would slip away to bed.
At supper Arthur Townshend found himself between the other Miss Christie, who was much engrossed with the man on her right, and an anæmic-looking young woman, the wife of one of the ministers present, who when conversed with said "Ya-as" and turned away her head.
This proved so discouraging that presently he gave up the attempt, and tried to listen to the conversation that was going on between Elizabeth and Mr. M'Cann.
"Let me see," Mr. M'Cann was saying, "where is your father's church? Oh ay, down there, is it? A big, half-empty kirk. I know it fine. Ay, gey stony ground, and if you'll excuse me saying it, your father's not the man for the job. What they want is a man who will start a P.S.A. and a band and give them a good rousing sermon. A man with a sense of humour. A man who can say strikin' things in the pulpit." (He sketched the ideal man, and his companion had no difficulty in recognising the portrait of Mr. M'Cann himself.) "With the right man that church might be full. Not, mind you, that I'm saying anything against your father, he does his best; but he's not advanced enough, he belongs to the old evangelicals—congregations like something brighter."
Presently he drifted into politics, and lived over again his meetings in Ayrshire, likening himself to Alexander Peden and Richard Cameron, until Elizabeth, whose heart within her was hot with hate, turned the flood of his conversation into another channel by asking some question about his family.
Four children he said he had, all very young; but he seemed to take less interest in them than in the fact that Lizzie, his wife, found it quite impossible to keep a "girrl." It was surprising to hear how bitterly this apostle of Freedom spoke of the "bit servant lasses" on whose woes he loved to dilate from the pulpit when he was inveighing against the idle, selfish rich.
Two imps of mischief woke in Elizabeth's grey eyes as she listened.
"Yes," she agreed, as her companion paused for a second in his indictment. "Servants are a nuisance. What a relief it would be to have slaves!"
"Whit's that?" said Mr. M'Cann, evidently not believing he had heard aright.
Elizabeth leaned towards him, her face earnest and sympathetic, her voice, when she spoke, honey-sweet, "like doves taboring upon their breasts."
"I said wouldn't it be delightful if we had slaves—nice fat slaves?"
Mr. M'Cann's eyes goggled in his head. He was quite incapable of making any reply, so he took out a day-before-yesterday's handkerchief and blew his nose; while Elizabeth continued: "Of course we wouldn't be cruel to them—not like Legree in Uncle Tom's Cabin. But just imagine the joy of not having to tremble before them! To be able to make a fuss when the work wasn't well done, to be able to grumble when the soup was watery and the pudding burnt—imagine, Mr. M'Cann, imagine having the power of life and death over the cook!"
Arthur Townshend, listening, laughed to himself; but Mr. M'Cann did not laugh. This impudent female had dared to make fun of him! With a snort of wrath he turned to his other neighbour and began to thunder platitudes at her which she had done nothing to deserve, and which she received with an indifferent "Is that so?" which further enraged him.
Elizabeth, having offended one man, turned her attention to the one on her other side, who happened to be Kirsty's fiancé, and enjoyed snatches of talk with him between Mr. Christie's stories, that gentleman being incorrigibly humorous all through supper.
When they got up to go away, Kirsty went with Elizabeth into the bedroom for her cloak.
"Kirsty, dear, I'm so glad," Elizabeth said.
Kirsty sat solidly down on a chair beside the dressing-table.
"So am I," she said. "I had almost given up hope. Oh! I know it's not a nice thing to say, but I don't care. You don't know what it means never to be first with anyone, to know you don't matter, that no one needs you. At home—well, Father has his church, and Mother has her bronchitis, and Kate has her Girl's Club, and Archie has his office, and they don't seem to feel the need of anything else. And you, Lizbeth, you never cared for me as I cared for you. You have so many friends; but I have no pretty ways, and I've a sharp tongue, and I can't help seeing through people, so I don't make friends.... And oh! how I have wanted a house of my own! That's not the proper thing to say either, but I have—a place of my own to polish and clean and keep cosy. I pictured it so often—specially, somehow, the storeroom. I knew where I would put every can on the shelves."
She rubbed with her handkerchief along the smooth surface of the dressing-table. "Every spring when I polished the furniture I thought, 'Next spring, perhaps, I'll polish my own best bedroom furniture'; but nobody looked the road I was on. Then Andrew came, and—I couldn't believe it at first—he liked me, he wanted to talk to me, he looked at me first when he came into the room.... He's three years younger