"Father was reading to us yesterday in the Bible where Job said, 'Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades?' and I asked Elsie to show them to me last night. Are they seven sisters, do you think? Elsie says they are. I wonder whether they are happy. We are only two sisters, and I am not happy."
"Neither am I," said Alec.
"Elsie is not happy either. She does not like Mr. Bond one little bit."
"She seems happy enough. Canst thou bind the sweet influences of a laugh? They are sweet to one and bitter to another. I can't bear to hear her laughing like that with Charlie Bond. He and I are not very good friends. I have a good mind to saddle my horse and ride home in the starlight."
"Oh, do not do that!" said Maggie in alarm. "Elsie would be sorry. I am sure she would. I won't let you go. I'll hold you tight. You are angry, and you will require to be answered out of the whirlwind, like Job."
Alec shook his head. He was calming down under the spell of wise little Maggie. No, he would not saddle his horse and ride away just yet. That would be too much of a telltale. Elsie would understand, and gloat over his trouble. Bond would triumph, and take his scalp. He looked upon himself as wiped out, and not fit to cumber the ground any longer. He would go away somewhere, anywhere, and make no sign. He would henceforth be dead to Elsie, but not buried. He would get over it. He would not let any one dance over his grave, or jeer at his tombstone.
The morbid thoughts that flit through the brain of the slighted lover are amazing and wonderful. The figments and pigments are all wrong. It is a mad world! and love is akin to madness.
There was a little bedroom at the end of the verandah, which the local clergyman occupied when on his visits to Borombyee. It was called the "prophet's chamber"; partly for this reason, and partly because Elsie pencilled the name on the door after hearing her father read in the Bible about the woman of Shunem, who asked her husband to make a little chamber on the wall for the prophet Elisha.
When the clergyman was not at Borombyee Alec always had the "prophet's chamber."