"Maybe ye 'd send yere carriage to fetch them up the brae!" remarked Mrs. McAravey, with a harsh, disagreeable laugh at her own pleasantry.
"Well, it is rather far," replied Mr. Smith, somewhat apologetically; "but it grieves me to see them growing up in ignorance, and without any knowledge of the Saviour."
"Thank ye, sir," cried Mrs. McAravey, satirically, "but I think ma mon and mysel' knows our duties, and can teach the wains, too, wi'out any parson comin' to help us. A pretty thing to tell us we knows nothing o' the Saviour! I can tell you, mon, I've walked more miles o' the Sawbath to my place o' worship than some folks as I know walks in a week."
The clergyman, somewhat taken aback at this outbreak, felt a rising flush of anger, and could only reply—
"I think, my good woman, you might remember whom you are speaking to, and might be civil to a stranger when he comes into your house."
To judge by the response, the second part of this appeal was more effective than the first. An appeal to authority or respect of persons is not usually successful in Ulster.
"I knows rightly who I 'm speakin' to, and I don't see as it makes any differ; but I 'm sorry I spoke sharp, seein' ye come so far, only I can't thole to be towd I 'm na fit to train up a wain in the knowledge o' the Saviour."
Expressing a hope that Elsie and Jim would come to school when weather and work permitted, and with a somewhat vague remark about "calling again," the Rev. Cooper Smith beat as graceful a retreat as was possible.
His other calls that day were scarcely more satisfactory, for though he encountered no such actual rudeness, there was everywhere the same patronising familiarity.
Andrew McAuley, the wealthiest farmer in the glen, invited him to have "a drop o' something," adding, by way of encouragement, "Ye needn't be afeerd—there's plenty iv it in the house."