“All is not gold that glitters, Dawtie!” he said. “The cup you saw was not the one in the book, but an imitation of it—mere gilded tin and colored glass—copied from the picture, as near as they could make it—just to see better what it must have been like. Why, my good girl, that cup would be worth thousands of pounds! So go to bed, and don't trouble yourself about gold cups. It is not likely any of them will come our way!”
Simple as Dawtie was, she did not believe him. But she saw no good to be done by disputing what he ought to know.
“It wasna aboot the gold cup I was troublin' mysel'!” she said, hesitatingly.
“You are right there!” he replied, with another deathly laugh, “it was not! But you have been troubling me about nothing half the night, and I am shivering with cold! We really must, both of us, go to bed! What would your mistress say!”
“No,” persisted Dawtie, “it wasna aboot the cup, gowd or no gowd; it was and is aboot my maister I'm troubled! I'm terrible feart for ye, sir! Ye're a worshiper o' Mammon, sir!”
The laird laughed, for the danger was over!—to Dawtie's deep dismay he laughed!
“My poor girl,” he said, “you take an innocent love of curious things for the worship of Mammon! Don't imagine me jesting. How could you believe an old man like me, an elder of the kirk, a dispenser of her sacred things, guilty of the awful crime of Mammon worship?”
He imagined her ignorantly associating the idea of some idolatrous ritual with what to him was but a phrase—the worship of Mammon. “Do you not remember,” he continued, “the words of Christ, that a man can not serve God and Mammon? If I be a Christian, as you will hardly doubt, it follows that I am not a worshiper of Mammon, for the two can not go together.”
“But that's just the question, sir! A man who worships God, worships Him with his whole heart and soul and strength and mind. If he wakes at night, it is to worship God; if he is glad in his heart, it is because God is, and one day he shall behold His face in brightness. If a man worships God, he loves Him so that no love can come between him and God; if the earth were removed, and the mountains cast into the midst of the sea, it would be all one to him, for God would be all the same. Is it not so, sir?”
“You are a good girl, Dawtie, and I approve of every word you say. It would more than savor of presumption to profess that I loved God up to the point you speak of; but I deserve to love Him. Doubtless a man ought to love God so, and we are all sinners just because we do not love God so. But we have the atonement!”