Elizabeth swallowed an awkward lump in her throat, and stood fingering the crochet edge of the toilet-cover without saying anything.
Then Kirsty jumped up, her own bustling little self again, rather ashamed of her long speech.
"Here I am keeping you, and Mr. Townshend standing waiting in the lobby. Poor man! He seems nice, Lizbeth, but he's awfully English."
Elizabeth followed her friend to the door, and stooping down, kissed her. "Bless you, Kirsty," she said.
She was rather silent on the way home. She said Mr. Christie's jocularity had depressed her.
"I suppose I may not laugh," Mr. Townshend remarked, "but I think Fish would have 'lawffed.' That's a good idea of yours about slaves."
"Were you listening?" she smiled ruefully. "It was wretched of me, when you think of that faithful couple, Marget and Ellen. That's the worst of this world, you can't score off one person without hurting someone quite innocent."
They found Mr. Seton sitting by the drawing-room fire. He had had a harassed day, waging warfare against sin and want (a war that to us seems to have no end and no victory, for still sin flaunts in the slums or walks our streets with mincing feet, and Lazarus still sits at our gates, "an abiding mystery," receiving his evil things), and he was taking the taste of it out of his mind with a chapter from Guy Mannering.
So far away was he under the Wizard's spell that he hardly looked up when the revellers entered the room, merely remarking, "Just listen to this." He read:
"'I remember the tune well,' he said. He took the flageolet from his pocket and played a simple melody.... She immediately took up the song:
'Are these the links of Forth, she said;
Or are they the crooks of Dee,
Or the bonny woods of Warrock Head
That I so plainly see?'
"'By Heaven!' said Bertram, 'it is the very ballad.'"
Mr. Seton closed the book with a sigh of pleasure, and asked them where they had been.
Elizabeth told him, and "Oh, yes, I remember now," he said. "Well, I hope you had a pleasant evening?"
"I think Mr. Christie had, anyway. That man's life is one long soiree-speech. And I wouldn't mind if he were really gay and jolly and carefree; but I know that at heart he is shrewd and calculating and un-simple as he can be. But, Father, the nicest thing has happened. Kirsty has got engaged to a man called Andrew Hamilton, a minister, a real jewel. You would like him, I know. But he hasn't got a church yet, although he is worth a dozen of the people who do get churches, and I was wondering what about Langhope? It's the nearest village to Etterick," she explained to Arthur. "It's high time Mr. Smillie retired. He is quite old, and he has money of his own, and could go and live in Edinburgh and attend all the Committees. It is such a good manse, and I can see Kirsty keeping it so spotless, and Mr. Hamilton working in the garden—and hens, perhaps—and everything so cosy. There's a specially good storeroom, too. I know, because we used to steal raisins and things out of it when we visited Mr. Smillie."
Mr. Seton laughed and called her an absurd creature, and Arthur asked if a good store-room was necessary to married happiness; but she heeded them not.
"You know, Father, it would be doing Langhope a really good turn to recommend Mr. Hamilton as their minister. How do I know, Arthur? I just know. His father was a Free Kirk minister, so he has been well brought up, and I know exactly the kind of sermons he will preach—solid well-reasoned discourses, with now and again an anecdote about the 'great Dr. Chalmers,' and with here and there a reference to 'the sainted Dr. Andrew Bonar' or 'Dr. Wilson of the Barclay.' Fine Free Kirk discourses. Such as you and I love, Father."
Her father shook his head at her; and Arthur, as he lit a cigarette, remarked that it was all Chinese to him. Elizabeth sat down on the arm of her father's chair.
"You had quite a success to-night, Arthur," she said kindly. "Mr. Christie called you a 'gentlemanly fellow,' and Mrs. Christie said, speaking for herself, she had no objection to the Cockney accent, she rather liked it! And oh! Father, your friend Mr. M'Cann was there. You know who I mean? He talked to me quite a lot. He has been politic-ing down in Ayrshire, and he told me that he rather reminds himself of the Covenanters at their best—Alexander Peden I think was the one he named."
Mr. Seton was carrying Guy Mannering to its place, but he stopped and said, "The wretched fellow!"
The utter wrath and disgust in his tone made his listeners shout with laughter, and Elizabeth said:
"Father, I love you. 'Cos why?"
Mr. Seton, still sore at this defiling of his idols, only grunted in reply.
"Because you are not too much of a saint after all. Oh! don't turn out the lights!"
CHAPTER XV
"There was a lady once, 'tis an old story,
That would not be a queen, that would she not
For all the mud in Egypt."
Henry VIII.
"It is funny to think," Elizabeth said, "that last Friday I was looking forward to your visit with horror."
"Hospitable creature!" Arthur replied.
"And now," she continued, "I can't remember what it was like not to know you."
They were sitting in the drawing-room after dinner. Mr. Seton had gone out, and Buff was asleep after such an hour of crowded life as seldom fell to his lot. He had been very down at the thought of losing his friend, and had looked so small and forlorn when he said his reluctant good-night, that Arthur, to lighten his gloom, asked him if he had ever taken part in a sea-fight, and being answered in the negative, had carried him upstairs shoulder-high. Then issued from the bathroom such a splashing of water, such gurgles of laughter and yells of triumph as Buff, a submarine, dashed from end to end of the large bath, torpedoing warships under Arthur's directions, that Elizabeth, Marget, and Ellen all rushed upstairs to say that if the performance did not stop at once the house would certainly be flooded.
As it was, fresh pyjamas had to be fetched, the pair laid out being put out of action by the wash of the waves. Then Arthur carried Buff to his room and threw him head-over-heels into bed, sitting by his side for quite half an hour and relating the most thrilling tales of pirates; finally presenting him with two fat half-crowns, and promising that he, Buff, should go up in an aeroplane at the earliest opportunity.
Buff, as he lay pillowed on that promise, his two half-crowns laid on a chair beside him along with one or two other grubby treasures, and his heart warm with gratitude, wondered and wondered what he could do in return—and still wondering fell asleep.
Elizabeth was knitting a stocking for her young brother, and counted audibly at intervals; Arthur lay in a large arm-chair and looked into the fire.
"Buff is frightfully sorry to lose you. One two—one two. This is a beautiful 'top,' don't you think? Rather like a Persian tile."
"Yes," said Arthur rather absently.
There was silence for a few minutes; then Elizabeth said, "There is something very depressing about last nights—we would really have been much better at the Band of Hope, and I would have been doing my duty, and thus have acquired merit. I hate people going away. When nice people come to a house they should just stay on and on, after the fashion of princes in fairy-tale stories seeking their fortunes. They stayed about twenty years before it seemed to strike them that their people might be getting anxious."
"For myself," said Arthur, "I ask nothing better. You know that, don't you?"
"One