The old man looked worn and tired; but smiled, and spoke to her with a rather melancholy gentleness that won her heart.
"Ye've a very sweet voice, lassie," he said. "Are ye for driving the old enemy away with it? Ye were singing as if ye were leading a forlorn hope. Ye had better not stop till ye've routed him."
The girl looked wonderingly for a moment; and then her heart went out to him with instinctive womanly sympathy. "I can sing as long as ever you please," she said; and she sang on with gathering courage, till the dusk began to creep over the landscape, and the shadows broadened on the stairs, and her voice failed from weariness.
She slid down from her place, warmed and cheered by a sense of comradeship, and stood beside him as he thanked her. The preacher's wife became wonderfully clever, as time went on, in foreseeing and warding off the black fits of depression that laid hold on the man; but, on that first evening, he had helped her, as a stronger and more cheerful spirit never could have.
"I am ashamed to go back to the kitchen," she said shyly; "I was so silly at dinner-time."
"An' so ye are Barnabas' wife!" he answered irrelevantly. "Well, well, it's no wonder ye feel a bit strange; but ye have driven the devil back. Come along wi' me, lass." And they went down together.
The preacher came home in the evening; he had been out all day. His eyes turned at once to the chimney corner, where Meg was sitting with her head bent down, fondling a kitten on the hearth.
"How is dad?" he asked of Tom, who hopped into the room with a tablecloth, which was entirely for their guest's benefit, under his arm.
"All right," said Tom. "Thanks to your wife, she's witched away the blues this time, and I thought we were in for a spell of 'em. I'll forgive ye for having the bad taste not to like me, if ye can cheer up dad;" turning round on Meg. "But what are we to call ye? Ye can't allus be 'Barnabas' wife!'"
"My name is Margaret," said Meg slowly. "I suppose that is what you had better call me."