“Christine is too busy to meddle with, Margot. She’s doing God’s best work—ministering to little 198 children. As I saw her half-an-hour ago, she was little lower than the angels. I’m doubting if an angel could be lovelier, or fuller of life and love, and every sweet influence.”
“Christine is a handsome lass, nae doubt o’ that, but our women are all o’ them heritage handsome. I’m doubting if Eve, being a Jewess, could be worth evening wi’ us.”
“Eve was not a Jewess. She was God’s eldest daughter, Margot.”
“Then God’s eldest daughter hasna a very gude character. She has been badly spoken of, ever since the warld began. And I do hope my Christine will behave hersel’ better than Eve did—if all’s true that is said anent her.”
“Christine is a good girl, Margot. If little children love a woman, and she loves them, the love of God is there. Margot! Margot! God comes to us in many ways, but the sweetest and tenderest of all of them, is when he sends Jesus Christ by the way of the cradle.”
All’s well that ends well. If this be true, the first session of Culraine school was a great success. It had brought an entirely new, and very happy estimate of a father’s and a mother’s duty to their children. It had even made them emulous of each other, in their care and attention to the highest wants of childhood.
The whole village was yet talking of the examination when the herring came. Then every woman 199 went gladly to her appointed post and work, and every man—rested and eager for labor—hailed the news with a shout of welcome. Peter Brodie’s big Sam brought it very early one lovely summer morning, and having anchored his boat, ran through the sleeping village shouting—“Caller Herrin’! In Culraine Bay!”
The call was an enchantment. It rang like a trumpet through the sleeping village, and windows were thrown up, and doors flung open, and half-dressed men were demanding in stentorian voices, “Where are the fish, Sam?”
“Outside Culraine Bay,” he answered, still keeping up his exultant cry of “Caller Herrin’!” and in less than half an hour men were at work preparing for the amazing physical strain before them. Much was to do if they were to cast their nets that evening, and the streets were soon busy with men and lads carrying nets and other necessities to the boats. It was up with the flag on every boat in commission, for the fishing, and this day’s last preparations excited the place as if it were some great national holiday. The women were equally full of joyful business. They had to cook the breakfast, but immediately after it were all in the packing and curing sheds. You would have been sure they were keeping holiday. Pleasant greetings, snatches of song, encouraging cries to the men struggling down to the boats with the leaded nets, shouts of hurry to the bewildered children, little flytings at their delays, O twenty different motives 200 for clamor and haste were rife, and not unpleasant, because through all there was that tone of equal interest and good fellowship that can never be mistaken.
Margot had insisted on a visit to her special shed, to see whether all was in readiness for her special labor, but Christine had entreated her to wait for her return from the town, where she was going for orders. She had left her mother with the clear understanding that she would not risk the walk and the chatter and the clatter until the following day. But as soon as she was alone, Margot changed her intentions. “I must make the effort,” she said to herself. “I’m feared of the pain, that’s all about it.” So she made the effort, and found out that there was something more than fear to be reckoned with.