at him with a kind of reserved approval. The tiny seat on which she sat with her back to the pony was hidden by the frothy flounces of her blue Sunday gown, and the feather in her Leghorn hat curled downwards towards her shoulder. She managed to look graceful even in her cramped position. Opposite to their daughter, Mr. and Mrs. MacAndrew sat stiff and large; they could not enjoy very great ease of body because the ancient basket carriage was extremely low at the back and hung so near the ground that the boots of its occupants were a bare half foot from the ground. MacAndrew and Mrs. MacAndrew knew in their hearts how much discomfort they would be spared if they were but stepping the road like other people, but they would have perished where they sat sooner than admit it to each other. The reins in MacAndrew’s hands went up in a steep incline to the fork-like contrivance above Isa’s head before beginning their even steeper descent to the pony’s mouth on the other side of it. Neither husband nor wife had any idea of the oddity of their appearance. They were ‘carriage people,’ and that was enough. Their response to Alec’s greeting was tempered by the view they had just had of Auntie Thompson in her grey wincey and towering bonnet in full cry after the pigs.
The bell had not yet begun to ring when Alec entered the kirk gate and saw Isa standing a little apart by her mother upon the gravel; MacAndrew was in conversation with a knot of acquaintances by the vestry door. Quite by himself was a pale young man in a black coat, who looked rather out of place among the strictly countrified men of the congregation; he had a gold watchchain and he wore gloves. He was good-looking in a townish way and he seemed to be scanning his surroundings with some interest. It was evident that Isa’s curiosity was aroused by him.
‘I don’t know who that gentleman can be,’ she said to her lover, almost in the same breath in which she greeted him.
As she spoke she adjusted a ribbon she wore at her throat.
‘A’m no carin’ vera muckle wha he is,’ replied he. ‘It’s yersel’ a’m thinkin’ about, Isa.’
‘Everybody will hear you if you speak so loud.’
‘And what for no? A’m fine an’ pleased they should ken. Isa, will ye no walk back wi’ me aifter the kirk’s skailed?’
‘Maybe,’ said the girl.
‘Isa’ll be tae drive i’ the carriage,’ broke in Mrs. MacAndrew, who stood by watching her daughter like an overfed Providence.
Alec looked at her with a sudden misgiving. He had never thought much about a mother-in-law. His experience of elderly women began and ended with Auntie Thompson, whom he had so shamefully deserted in her need this morning.
The bell began to ring over their heads, and MacAndrew left his friends and joined his belongings.
‘D’ye see yon lad yonder?’ said he, nodding his head backwards over his shoulder towards the stranger.
Both his wife and his daughter closed in on him eagerly.
‘He’s just newly back frae Ameriky wi’ a braw bittie money; he’s no been hame since he was a bairn an’ syne he’s come back tae buy a fairm. He’s got fowk he’s seekin’ hereaboot, they tell me, but a dinna ken wha they’ll be. James Petrie couldna tell me, nor ony ither body.’
Mrs. MacAndrew’s eyes were running over the strange young man as though she were pricing every garment he wore.
‘Aye, aye,’ she murmured, twisting her mouth appreciatively, ‘a’ll no say but he looks weel aff.’
There was a general move into the kirk, and Mrs. MacAndrew pushed in and squeezed into her seat, which was on the ground floor at right angles to the pulpit. It gave a good view of ‘the breist o’ the laft,’ from end to end. Isa was swept from her lover, who made his way up to his own place. The strange young man went in after everybody else and stood looking round to see where he should go. A genial-looking old labourer beckoned him to a place at his side.
The minister was ushered up the pulpit steps by the beadle, and the ensuing psalm brought the minds of the congregation together. The stranger shared a book with his companion and contributed to the singing in a correct tenor which drew general attention to him once more. Isa observed him from under the brim of her Leghorn hat, noticing his trim hair and the gold tie-pin which made a bright spot in the sunshine that streamed from a window near him. She did not once look up at Alec, who sat in the gallery with his eyes riveted on her. Mrs. MacAndrew’s thoughts were flowing in the same direction as those of her daughter. She was wondering what farm the stranger might have in his mind; there was one to be sold shortly, not a mile from her own roof. If only he had returned a Sunday earlier! Still …
She lost herself in speculations during the prayer that followed, and was only roused from them by the opening of the kirk door and the tramp of heavy boots climbing the gallery stairs. Up they came, and step by step the head of Auntie Thompson rose in a succession of jerks and was revealed to the worshippers below. Her glistening face was scarlet, for she had been engaged in a grim chase before starting on her walk and the steep stairs were the culmination of the whole. She stood still, panting audibly, while Alec held open the door of their pew, her grey wincey shoulders heaving and the monstrous erection, with its nodding feather and purple rose, pushed to one side. Most of those who looked up and saw her grinned. Mrs. MacAndrew turned her head away.
When the temporary distraction was over, quiet fell on the kirk again and the service went on decorously. The sun shifted from the window near the stranger and the gleam of his tie-pin transferred itself to the spectacles that lay beside his neighbour; the sermon began and one or two settled themselves for covert sleep. The rustling of the Bible leaves which followed the giving out of the text was over when a tiny black shadow darted across the ceiling of the kirk and dived with incredible swiftness down to the floor, across to a corner below the gallery, out and up again, whisking past the sounding-board of the pulpit. Finally it flew up and disappeared into one of the gaping ventilators overhead. Only Alec and a few occupants of the side galleries noticed the awful change that had come over Auntie Thompson’s countenance.
She was looking at the ventilator that had swallowed the bat with an expression of concentrated dismay. Her red face had lost its colour and her eyes stared. Her breath came in gasps. Alec, who knew her weakness, stared at the ventilator too, for he did not know what might happen if the creature should come out. For one moment she seemed petrified, and he was too slow at grasping an emergency to whisper to her the suggestion that she should leave the kirk. Some girls in the gallery who were watching the situation stuffed their handkerchiefs into their mouths as they looked at Auntie Thompson. The minister, who, though exactly opposite and on the gallery level, was short-sighted, preached on undisturbed.
The bat shot out of the ventilator again like a flash of black lightning, and this time circled round the upper part of the building. Sometimes its circles were narrow and sometimes wide; once the angular wings almost brushed Alec’s face; the wind of them lifted a stray lock of his hair, and Auntie Thompson leaned back with a convulsive noise, like a sob, in her throat. It was loud enough to attract the people below and many looked round. MacAndrew, who was asleep, awoke. His wife and Isa were looking up at Auntie Thompson like a couple of cats watching a nest of young birds.
The bat gave one of those faint, fretful chirrups peculiar to its kind and shot straight at the spot where the purple rose bloomed over Auntie Thompson’s agonised face. As an armed man draws his revolver in defence of his life, she snatched her umbrella and put it up.
A smothered giggle burst from the gallery. Downstairs, the congregation, with a few exceptions, gazed up in horrified surprise; but the young stranger’s friendly neighbour, having put on his spectacles, sat wearing a delighted grin that displayed his one remaining front tooth. The minister paused
