“Taal and faer and chentle and coot!” murmured the old man as he held her hand for a moment in his. With a start of suspicion he dropped it, and cried out in alarm—“She’ll not pe a Cam’ell, Malcolm?”
“Na, na, daddy—far frae that,” answered Malcolm.
“Then my laty will pe right welcome to Tuncan’s heart,” he replied, and taking her hand again led her to a chair.
When they left, she expressed herself charmed with the piper, but when she learned the cause of his peculiar behaviour at first, she looked grave, and found his feeling difficult to understand.
They next visited the Partaness, with whom she was far more amused than puzzled. But her heart was drawn to the young woman who sat in a corner, rocking her child in its wooden cradle, and never lifting her eyes from her needle-work: she knew her for the fisher-girl of Malcolm’s picture.
From house to house he took her, and where they went, they were welcomed. If the man was smoking, he put away his pipe, and the woman left her work and sat down to talk with her. They did the honours of their poor houses in a homely and dignified fashion. Clementina was delighted. But Malcolm told her he had taken her only to the best houses in the place to begin with. The village, though a fair sample of fishing villages, was no ex-sample, he said: there were all kinds of people in it as in every other. It was a class in the big life-school of the world, whose special masters were the sea and the herrings.
“What would you do now, if you were lord of the place?” asked Clementina, as they were walking back by the sea-gate; “—I mean, what would be the first thing you would do?”
“As it would be my business to know my tenants that I might rule them,” he answered, “I would first court the society and confidence of the best men among them. I should be in no hurry to make changes, but would talk openly with them, and try to be worthy of their confidence. Of course I would see a little better to their houses, and improve their harbour: and I would build a boat for myself that would show them a better kind; but my main hope for them would be the same as for myself—the knowledge of him whose is the sea and all its store, who cares for every fish in its bosom, but for the fisher more than many herrings. I would spend my best efforts to make them follow him whose first servants were the fishermen of Galilee, for with all my heart I believe that that Man holds the secret of life, and that only the man who obeys him can ever come to know the God who is the root and crown of our being, and whom to know is freedom and bliss.”
A pause followed.
“But do you not sometimes find it hard to remember God all through your work?” asked Clementina.