next room, would strike up, "Come, bring to me a stoup o' wine, and bring it in a silver tassie." Then their old heads would wag, and they would give over the endless battle for the sake of hearing a "bonnie lassie" sing their favourite song. But it was very different when the Free Church missioner came round, for he was an earnest, red-haired person, who any day of the week would gladly have testified against Black Prelacy to the bitter end of the stake. He was a stumbling-block, even to Marjory, who professed calm tolerance; but then those courtly old admirers of hers, to say nothing of Cousin Tom's rather foreign manners, had spoilt her. So that amid all her theories--the theories of clever youth instinct with the love of justice and liberty--she could not help being repelled by the roughness of life when, as it were, she touched and handled it. The people themselves, however, thought it a sign of strength to bang the pulpit and bellow, as, indeed, it was, undoubtedly. So the consensus of opinion in all sects was that the Free Church had the finest preacher. Not that it mattered much in a place where church-going on a Sunday was a recognised dissipation, which had to last for a week. Thus, no matter who was in the pulpit, the little school-house on a fine day overflowed; and even the Reverend Father Macdonald had not a few applicants for a blessing against witchcraft if the cows did not milk properly. This, however, was done on the sly, by accident as it were, when the petitioners chanced to meet priestly authority in the post-office.
In order, therefore, to hold his own amid the hosts of Midian, the Reverend James spent quite a large slice of his modest income on all-round collars and silk cassocks; and even when the old Adam arose at the sight of a red-brown river, and he had to creep away with a hazel rod and a bag of worms to some seething pool where the sea-trout lay, he still kept to his professional garments and sate on a rock with his long coat-tails pinned behind his back, looking like a gigantic crow about to fly.
Despite this and other ridiculous habits, Marjory, with her clear, honest eyes saw the real desire to do his duty to Church and State underlying the young man's indecision; but, fortunately for him, she had no notion that of late this had taken the form of wishing to marry her. The fact being that in a recent visit the Bishop had not only remarked that the parish clergy should be the husbands of one wife, but had rather pointedly referred to the immense improvement in the school standard, since Miss Carmichael had begun to practise teaching there. The direct consequence of which had been to make the Reverend James believe himself in love, and at the same time to make him regard all Marjory's opinions as episcopally blessed. An effort needing mental gymnastics of the highest class, especially when, as now, she was bent on mischief.
"Good news," she echoed. "Well, I hardly know; that must surely depend entirely on what sort of person Captain Macleod turns out to be." This she knew must, to begin with, savour of blasphemy to one born and bred on the estate.
"Naturally, I may say, of course, but----" he looked at her pathetically, like a dog when asked to perform a difficult trick; "you--you--you surely have not heard anything against him, have you?"
Marjory's eyes twinkled, but only for a moment; after all it was poor fun depolarising his mental compass.
"Anything against him? No; except that he is too good-looking, I am told."
"Handsome is that handsome does," remarked the Reverend James, cheerfully; it was a favourite proverb at the palace, and he felt sure of his ground. Unfortunately, since it roused Marjory to contradiction.
"Nonsense! As if all the goodness in the world could change a snub nose into a Grecian."
"But surely, my dear Miss Marjory," protested the young man feebly, "the proverb does not assert--em--that sort of thing. I have always understood it--em--I mean the latter half--perhaps I should say the simile--alludes to moral worth."
"Now, Mr. Gillespie! does that mean you consider beauty and goodness to be the same, or simply that you deny the value of physical beauty altogether?" asked Marjory in aggrieved tones.
"I--I don't think I mean either," he replied, so naively that she was obliged to laugh; "but indeed," he went on, "it seems to me, as I remember the Bishop said in his sermon on All Souls, that beauty and goodness are in a measure synonymous, that----"
"Do you mean," she interrupted hastily, but with a sort of quick hesitation which came often to her speech when she was really interested, "that not only are good things necessarily beautiful in a way, but that beautiful things must be good? Look at Tito! All his vileness did not mar the perfection of his beauty. It was a tower of strength to him till the day of his death. It must be so--you can't help it. The thing is good in itself."
Never having read "Romola," the Reverend James fell back discreetly on a more unimpeachable proverb, by remarking, with the air of a man making a valuable contribution to the argument:--
"Beauty is but skin deep."
"Who wants it to be more?" she asked, hotly. "That is all you see. No one asks whether the muscles follow the proper curves beneath the skin, or the bones are strong. And, after all, it seems to me that goodness and beauty appeal to the same chord--the love of everything that is clear, defined, orderly. Ugliness is so incoherent, so indistinct, Mr. Gillespie! Did it ever strike you how unnecessarily ugly we all are? Now, don't deny the fact. Remember the Bishop's hymn says, 'only man is vile.'"
"But that really does apply to his moral."
"I don't agree with you. Some of us, perhaps, are wicked, but most of us are hideous."
"Do you really think so?" And the self-conscious look on his smug, comely face was too much for her gravity. She laughed merrily.
"There are exceptions to every rule, Mr. Gillespie; I only meant to say that since the strongest and best, and therefore, according to you, the most beautiful, had survived in the struggle for existence----"
"By the bye," he put in, for him quite eagerly, "the Bishop has just sent me an excellent reply to the Darwinian----"
Marjory went on remorselessly, "That we were singularly plain-looking, as a rule. For my part I would gladly have eliminated the Carmichael nose if I had had any choice in the matter."
The remark left a grand opening for a compliment if he could at the moment have thought of anything save the crude assertion that he considered it the most beautiful nose in the world. So he remained silent, casting about in his mind for a less absolute form, with such concentrated admiration in his face, that even Marjory could not avoid noticing it, and with a sudden curl of her lip, changed the subject by asking him, in her best categorical manner, when he had last been to see old Peggy, who was bad with her rheumatism. Now old Peggy's cottage was not an inviting-looking abode--a boulder-built hut with a peat roof and a rudimentary chimney--and it lay close by in a hollow between the road and a bog full of waving cotton grass. So the Reverend James regretfully gave up his opportunity as lost for the time; but a gleam of manly resolution came to him as he looked first at the hut, then down the road, the pleasant sunshiny road stretching away to where a thin blue smoke from the chimneys of Gleneira Lodge rose above the silver firs and copper beeches to the right of the big house. All that distance to traverse with Marjory, as against Peggy Duncan the pauper, who was bad enough at the best, but, with the rheumatism, simply appalling.
"I'm afraid I haven't time to-day," he began, with admirable regret, which, however, changed to consternation as his companion paused and held out her hand.
"Then good-bye! I promised to look in on my way home. And on the whole it is better as it is, for it is positively unsafe to visit old Peggy in couples when she is ill. So long as she has but one visitor, you know, the fear of losing a gossip bridles her tongue; but when there are two, one is always a scapegoat." Now, Marjory looked at her companion gravely, and spoke deliberately, "You wouldn't, I'm sure,
