The Little Minister, Sir James Matthew Barrie [best short novels TXT] 📗

whaur to put them a'."

"Wha is she?"

It was Rob Dow who spoke. All saw he had been drinking, or they might have wondered at his vehemence. As it was, everybody looked at every other body, and then everybody sighed.

"Ay, wha is she?" repeated several.

"I see you ken nothing about her," said Rob, much relieved; and he then lapsed into silence.

"We ken a' about her," said Snecky, "except just wha she is. Ay, that's what we canna bottom. Maybe you could guess, Tammas?"

"Maybe I could, Sneck," Haggart replied, cautiously; "but on that point I offer no opinion."

"If she bides on the Kaims road," said Tibbie Craik, "she maun be a farmer's dochter. What say you to Bell Finlay?"

"Na; she's U. P. But it micht be Loups o' Malcolm's sister. She's promised to Muckle Haws; but no doubt she would gie him the go-by at a word frae the minister."

"It's mair likely," said Chirsty, "to be the factor at the Spittal's lassie. The factor has a grand garden, and that would account for such basketfuls o' flowers."

"Whaever she is," said Birse, "I'm thinking he could hae done better."

"I'll be fine pleased wi' ony o' them," said Tibbie, who had a magenta silk, and so was jealous of no one.

"It hasna been proved," Haggart pointed out, "that the flowers came frae thae parts. She may be sending them frae Glasgow."

"I aye understood it was a Glasgow lady," said Snecky. "He'll be like the Tilliedrum minister that got a lady to send him to the college on the promise that he would marry her as soon as he got a kirk. She made him sign a paper."

"The far-seeing limmer," exclaimed Chirsty. "But if that's what Mr. Dishart has done, how has he kept it so secret?"

"He wouldna want the women o' the congregation to ken he was promised till after they had voted for him."

"I dinna haud wi' that explanation o't," said Haggart, "but I may tell you that I ken for sure she's a Glasgow leddy. Lads, ministers is near aye bespoke afore they're licensed. There's a michty competition for them in the big toons. Ay, the leddies just stand at the college gates, as you may say, and snap them up as they come out."

"And just as well for the ministers, I'se uphaud," said Tibbie, "for it saves them a heap o' persecution when they come to the like o' Thrums. There was Mr. Meiklejohn, the U. P. minister: he was no sooner placed than every genteel woman in the town was persecuting him. The Miss Dobies was the maist shameless; they fair hunted him."

"Ay," said Snecky; "and in the tail o' the day ane o' them snacked him up. Billies, did you ever hear o' a minister being refused?"

"Never."

"Weel, then, I have; and by a widow woman too. His name was Samson, and if it had been Tamson she would hae ta'en him. Ay, you may look, but it's true. Her name was Turnbull, and she had another gent after her, name o' Tibbets. She couldna make up her mind atween them, and for a while she just keeped them dangling on. Ay, but in the end she took Tibbets. And what, think you, was her reason? As you ken, thae grand folk has their initials on their spoons and nichtgowns. Ay, weel, she thocht it would be mair handy to take Tibbets, because if she had ta'en the minister the T's would have had to be changed to S's. It was thoctfu' o' her."

"Is Tibbets living?" asked Haggart sharply.

"No; he's dead."

"What," asked Haggart, "was the corp to trade?"

"I dinna ken."

"I thocht no," said Haggart, triumphantly. "Weel, I warrant he was a minister too. Ay, catch a woman giving up a minister, except for another minister."

All were looking on Haggart with admiration, when a voice from the door cried--

"Listen, and I'll tell you a queerer ane than that."

"Dagont," cried Birse, "it's Wearywarld, and he has been hearkening. Leave him to me."

When the post returned, the conversation was back at Mr. Dishart.

"Yes, lathies," Haggart was saying, "daftness about women comes to all, gentle and simple, common and colleged, humourists and no humourists. You say Mr. Dishart has preached ower muckle at women to stoop to marriage, but that makes no differ. Mony a humorous thing hae I said about women, and yet Chirsty has me. It's the same wi' ministers. A' at aince they see a lassie no' unlike ither lassies, away goes their learning, and they skirl out, 'You dawtie!' That's what comes to all."

"But it hasna come to Mr. Dishart," cried Rob Dow, jumping to his feet. He had sought Haggart to tell him all, but now he saw the wisdom of telling nothing. "I'm sick o' your blathers. Instead o' the minister's being sweethearting yesterday, he was just at the Kaims visiting the gamekeeper. I met him in the Wast town-end, and gaed there and back wi' him."

"That's proof it's a Glasgow leddy," said Snecky.

"I tell you there's no leddy ava!" swore Rob.

"Yea, and wha sends the baskets o' flowers, then?"

"There was only one flower," said Rob, turning to his host.

"I aye understood," said Haggart heavily, "that there was only one flower."

"But though there was just ane," persisted Chirsty, "what we want to ken is wha gae him it."

"It was me that gae him it," said Rob; "it was growing on the roadside, and I plucked it and gae it to him."

The company dwindled away shamefacedly, yet unconvinced; but Haggart had courage to say slowly--

"Yes, Rob, I had aye a notion that he got it frae you."

Meanwhile, Gavin, unaware that talk about him and a woman unknown had broken out in Thrums, was gazing, sometimes lovingly and again with scorn, at a little bunch of holly-berries which Jean had gathered from her father's garden. Once she saw him fling them out of his window, and then she rejoiced. But an hour afterwards she saw him pick them up, and then she mourned. Nevertheless, to her great delight, he preached his third sermon against Woman on the following Sabbath. It was universally acknowledged to be the best of the series. It was also the last.


CHAPTER XVIII.


CADDAM--LOVE LEADING TO A RUPTURE.

Gavin told himself not to go near the mud house on the following Monday; but he went. The distance is half a mile, and the time he took was two hours. This was owing to his setting out due west to reach a point due north; yet with the intention of deceiving none save himself. His reason had warned him to avoid the Egyptian, and his desires had consented to be dragged westward because they knew he had started too soon. When the proper time came they knocked reason on the head and carried him straight to Caddam. Here reason came to, and again began to state its case. Desires permitted him to halt, as if to argue the matter out, but were thus tolerant merely because from where he stood he could see Nanny's doorway. When Babbie emerged from it reason seems to have made one final effort, for Gavin quickly took that side of a tree which is loved of squirrels at the approach of an enemy. He looked round the tree-trunk at her, and then reason discarded him. The gypsy had two empty pans in her hands, For a second she gazed in the minister's direction, then demurely leaped the ditch of leaves that separated Nanny's yard from Caddam, and strolled into the wood. Discovering with indignation that he had been skulking behind the tree, Gavin came into the open. How good of the Egyptian, he reflected, to go to the well for water, and thus save the old woman's arms! Reason shouted from near the manse (he only heard the echo) that he could still make up on it. "Come along." said his desires, and marched him prisoner to the well.

The path which Babbie took that day is lost in blaeberry leaves now, and my little maid and I lately searched for an hour before we found the well. It was dry, choked with broom and stones, and broken rusty pans, but we sat down where Babbie and Gavin had talked, and I stirred up many memories. Probably two of those pans, that could be broken in the hands to-day like shortbread, were Nanny's, and almost certainly the stones are fragments from the great slab that used to cover the well. Children like to peer into wells to see what the world is like at the other side, and so this covering was necessary. Rob Angus was the strong man who bore the stone to Caddam, flinging it a yard before him at a time. The well had also a wooden lid with leather hinges, and over this the stone was dragged.

Gavin arrived at the well in time to offer Babbie the loan of his arms. In her struggle she had taken her lips into her mouth, but in vain did she tug at the stone, which refused to do more than turn round on the wood. But for her presence, the minister's efforts would have been equally futile. Though not strong, however, he had the national horror of being beaten before a spectator, and once at school he had won a fight by telling his big antagonist to come on until the boy was tired of pummelling him. As he fought with the stone now, pains shot through his head, and his arms threatened to come away at the shoulders; but remove it he did.

"How strong you are!" Babbie said with open admiration.

I am sure no words of mine could tell how pleased the minister was; yet he knew he was not strong, and might have known that she had seen him do many things far more worthy of admiration without admiring them. This, indeed, is a sad truth, that we seldom give our love to what is worthiest in its object.

"How curious that we should have met here," Babbie said, in her dangerously friendly way, as they filled the pans. "Do you know I quite started when your shadow fell suddenly on the stone. Did you happen to be passing through the wood?"

"No," answered truthful Gavin, "I was looking for you. I thought you saw me from Nanny's door."

"Did you? I only saw a man hiding behind a tree, and of course I knew it could not be you."

Gavin looked at her sharply, but she was not laughing at him.

"It was I," he admitted; "but I was not exactly hiding behind the tree."

"You had only stepped behind it for a moment," suggested the Egyptian.

Her gravity gave way to laughter under Gavin's suspicious looks, but the laughing ended abruptly. She had heard a noise in the wood, Gavin heard it too, and they both turned round in time to see two ragged boys running from them. When boys are very happy they think they must be doing wrong, and in a wood, of which they are among the natural inhabitants, they always take flight from the enemy, adults, if given time. For my own part, when I see a boy drop from a tree I am as little surprised as if he were an apple or a nut. But Gavin was startled, picturing these spies handing in the new sensation about him at