This young man’s coming was not delayed very long, for by midsummer he was in their midst, looking very much improved by his stay in a more civilized community. He made no delay in going to see Agnes, and eagerly asked at his first opportunity: “Are ye still heart-free, Agnes? Is there no one sitting up wi’ ye?”
“No one, Archie,” she replied.
“And there’s none o’ the lads hereabouts you like better than me? Ye’ve not forgotten, and ye still have the sixpence?”
“I have it still, yes.” She ignored the first part of his speech.
“Ah, weel, then.” Archie gave a sigh of satisfaction. He felt surer of his ground. He had been somewhat disturbed on Parker Willett’s account, but Jeanie had reassured him by telling him that Parker had left the neighborhood. “Jist persevere, Archie,” she said. “It’s slow and steady wins the race.” Nevertheless, he felt that somehow there was a change in Agnes; she was more thoughtful and gentle, and less free with him than she had been. He approved of the thoughtfulness and gentleness, and attributed the fact of her diffidence to her feeling more conscious in his presence now that she was older. Archie was quite a self-satisfied person, and was not disposed to underrate himself, especially since he had been at his grandfather’s. He had observed the deference paid to the “meenister,” and felt himself quite in the position to accept all the consideration due to the cloth. “It’s not to be wondered at that she is impressed by the knowledge I’m gainin’,” he told himself, “and she’s beginning to see that it’s a high position in the world she’ll be having.”
But one fatal day Agnes undeceived him, and he groped for some time in a pit of humility which he had digged for himself.
It was as the two were coming home from Jeanie’s one summer evening. Jeanie always did her best to show off Archie’s learning, and to let Agnes know that he was becoming a person of importance. And on this particular occasion Archie was feeling specially pleased with himself, the more so that Agnes was very quiet, and he felt that she was quite impressed. He was more than usually voluble, having gained much in the art of conversation in his absence.
“I am thinking,” he said, “of those days when I was in such awe of our good meenister. To be sure, Agnes, there is much dignity in the office, but it is not you that need feel abashed by my little learning. ‘Quod ignotum pro magnifico est.’” He rolled the Latin words off his tongue with a relish.
Agnes’s temper had been rising all the evening. She was not slow to notice Archie’s self-complacence and she turned on him. “Speak in plain English, Archie M’Clean. You needn’t try to air your knowledge before me. I abashed by you? Stand in awe of your little pickings of learning? I’ll venture to say that I know more this minute about some things than you do. Can you recite me the play of Hamlet? Can you tell me when King Henry Fifth of England entered France? or who it was that wrote the ‘Faerie Queene’?”
Archie looked at her in amazement. “Are ye daft, Agnes? Why should you be knowing all those things?”