Then ensued the first 'stand-up fight' between the two. As her cousin waxed hotter Mona waxed cooler, and finally she ended the discussion by setting out to speak to Mr Stuart herself.
She found him in his comfortable study, his slippered feet on the fender, and a polemico-religious novel in his hand.
"I am sorry to find my cousin has made an engagement for me this evening," she said. "It is quite impossible for me to fulfil it."
"Oh, nonsense!" he said kindly. "It is too late to withdraw now. Your name is in the programme," and he glanced at the neatly written paper on his writing-table, as if it had been a legal document at the least. "My wife is making copies of that for all the speakers. You can't draw back now."
"It might be too late to withdraw," said Mona, "if I had ever put myself forward; but, although my cousin meant to act kindly to every one concerned, she and I are two distinct people."
"Come, come! Of course I quite understand your feeling a little shy, if you are not used to singing in public; but you will be all right as soon as you begin. I remember my first sermon—what a state I was in, to be sure! And yet they told me it was a great success."
"I am very sorry," said Mona. "It is not mere nervousness and shyness—though there is that too, of course—it is simply that I am not qualified to do it."
"We are not very critical. There won't be more than three persons present who know good singing from bad."
"Unfortunately I should wish to sing for those three."
"Ah," he said, with a curl of his lip, "you must have appreciation. The lesson some of us have got to learn in life, Miss Maclean, is to do without appreciation." He paused, but her look of sudden interest was inviting. "One is tempted sometimes to think that one could speak to so much more purpose in a world where there is some intellectual life, where people are not wholly blind to the problems of the day; but to preach Sunday after Sunday to those who have no eyes to see, no ears to hear, to suppress one's best thoughts——"