“Uncle, will you please tell me something?”
“Surely, my dear, if I can,” answered my Uncle Drummond kindly, laying down his book.
“Are all the people at Abbotscliff going to Heaven?”
I really meant it, but my Uncle Drummond put on such a droll expression, and Angus laughed so much, that I woke up to see that they thought I had said something very queer. When my uncle spoke, it was not at first to me.
“Flora,” said he, “where have you taken your cousin?”
“Only into the cottages, Father, and to Monksburn,” said Flora, in a diverted tone, as if she were trying not to laugh.
“Either they must all have had their Sabbath manners on,” said my Uncle Drummond, “or else there are strange folks at Brocklebank. No, my dear; I fear not, by any means.”
“I am afraid,” said I, “we must be worse folks at Brocklebank than I thought we were. But these seem to me, Uncle, such a different kind of people—as if they were travelling on another road, and had a different end in view. Nearly all the people I see here seem to think more of what they ought to do, and at Brocklebank we think of what we like to do.”
I did not, somehow, like to say right out what I really meant—to the one set God seemed a Friend, to the other He was a Stranger.
“Do you hear, Angus, what a good character we have?” said my Uncle Drummond, smiling. “We must try to keep it, my boy.”