It was Eppie’s custom to vary the long monotony of Mr. MacNab’s dreary, nasal, burring voice by sundry surreptitious occupations, such as drawing imaginary pictures with her forefinger upon the lap of her frock, picking out in the Bible all the words of which her aunts said she could only know the meaning when she grew up, counting the number of times that Mr. MacNab stiffly raised his hand in speaking, seeing how often she could softly kick the pew in front of her before being told to stop; and then there was the favorite experiment suggested to her by the advertisement of a soap where, after fixing the eyes upon a red spot while one counted thirty, one found, on looking at a blank white space, that the spot appeared transformed, ghost-like and floating, to a vivid green. Eppie’s fertile imagination had seen in Mr. MacNab’s thin, red face a substitute for the spot, and most diverting results had followed when, after a fixed stare at his countenance, one transferred him, as it were, to the pages of one’s prayer-book. To see Mr. MacNab dimly hovering there, a green emanation, made him less intolerable in reality: found, at least, a use for him. This discovery had been confided to the Graingers, and they had been grateful for it. And when all else failed and even Mr. MacNab’s poor uses had palled, there was one bright moment to look forward to in the morning’s suffocating tedium. Just before the sermon, Uncle Nigel, settling himself in his corner, would feel, as if absently, in his waistcoat pocket and then slip a lime-drop into her hand. The sharply sweet flavor filled her with balmy content, and could, with discretion in the use of the tongue, be prolonged for ten minutes.
But to-day her eyes and thoughts were fixed on Gavan; and when the lime-drop was in her mouth she crunched it mechanically and heedlessly: how he held his prayer-book, his pallid, melancholy profile bent above it, how he sat gravely listening to Mr. MacNab, how he prayed and sang. Only toward the end of the sermon was the tension of her spirit relieved by seeing humanizing symptoms of weariness. She was sure that he was hearing as little as she was—his thoughts were far away; and when he put up a hand to hide a yawn her jaws stretched themselves in quick sympathy. Gavan’s eyes at this turned on her and he smiled openly and delightfully at her. Delightfully; yet the very fact of his daring to smile made him more grown up than ever. Such maturity, such strange spiritual assurance, could afford lightnesses. He brought with him, into the fresh, living world outside, his aura of mystery.
Eppie walked beside her uncle and still observed Gavan as he went before them with the aunts.
“How do you like your playmate, Eppie?” the general asked.
“He isn’t a playmate,” Eppie gravely corrected him.
“Not very lively? But a nice boy, eh?”
“I think he is very nice; but he is too big to care about me.”
“Nonsense; he’s but three years older.”
“Four, Uncle Nigel. That makes a great deal of difference at our ages,” said Eppie, wisely.
“Nonsense,” the general repeated. “He is only a bit down on his luck; he’s not had time to find you out yet. To-morrow he joins you in your Greek and history, and I fancy he’ll see that four years’ difference isn’t such a difference when it comes to some things. Not many chits of your age are such excellent scholars.”