“I’ll go home this hour, and the books will be here 234 before dark. Get as much fresh air as you can, and fill your mind with fresh pictures, and fresh ideas, and I wouldn’t wonder if you win back your spirits, and your beauty. Your mother is a great care, lassie!”
“Ay, Doctor, but she is in God’s care. I hae naething to do but help and pleasure her, when she’s waking. She sleeps much o’ her time now. I think the medicine o’ the last doctor frae Aberdeen, is the because o’ her sleepiness. I was going to ask you to take a look at it.”
He did so, and said in reply, “There’s no harm in it, but it would be well enough to give it with a double portion of water.”
Then the Domine went away, and Christine did not know that this hour was really the turning point of her life. And it is perhaps well for the majority that this important crisis is seldom recognized on its arrival. There might be interferences, and blunderings of all kinds. But a destiny that is not realized, or meddled with, goes without let or hindrance to its appointed end.
Christine rose with a new strength in her heart and went to her mother. “Come here, dear lass,” said Margot. “The Domine was telling me thou art sick wi’ the nursing o’ me, and that thou must hae a change.”
“The Domine had no right to say such a thing. I am quite well, Mither. I should be sick, if I was one mile from you. I have no work and no pleasure 235 away from your side, dear, dear Mither! I am sorry the Domine judged me sae hardly.”
“The Domine is an interfering auld man. He is getting outside his pulpit. When I was saying I missed wee Jamie, and I wished him to come mair often to see me, you should hae watched him bridle up. ‘James must be more under control,’ he said, in a vera pompous manner. I answered, ‘The laddie is quite biddable, Doctor,’ and he said, ‘Mistress, that belongs to his years. He is yet under authority, and I cannot allow him too much freedom.’ And the bairn is my ain! My ain grandchild! Too much freedom wi’ his sick grandmother! Heard ye ever the like?”
“Weel, Mither, he was right in a way. Jamie has been a bit stiff-necked and self-willed lately.”
“There isna a thing wrang wi’ the laddie.”
“Weel, he behaves better wi’ you than wi’ any other person. The Domine is making a fine lad o’ him.”