“Really, Mr. Munroe,” she said coldly, “my feelings about the matter are nobody’s concern, I....”
“I beg your pardon,” he said gruffly, and blushed to the roots of his hair.
“Oh these touchy Scots!” she thought impatiently.
There was an awkward silence for some seconds, and she decided the only way to “save his face” was to ask him a personal question, and give him the chance of snubbing her in his turn; so she said, “We had no idea when you stayed with us last autumn that you were thinking of being ordained ... but perhaps you weren’t thinking of it then?”
He did not answer at once, but seemed to be meditating: “It’s never quite a matter of thinking,” he said finally, “it’s just a drifting ... drawn on and on by the perfumes of the Church. What is it the Vulgate says again? In odore unguentorum tuorum curremus ...” he broke off, and then after a few seconds, as if summing up, slightly humorously, the situation, he added ruminatively, the monosyllable “úhu!” And the queer Scots ejaculation seemed to give a friendly, homely turn to his statement.
“You were lucky being born in the Church,” he went on; “my father was an Established Church minister up in Inverness-shire, and I was taught to look upon the Church as the Scarlet Woman. I remember once at the Laird’s I ... well, I came near to bringing up my tea because Lady Stewart happened to say that her cook was a Catholic. And sometimes still,” and he lowered his voice and looked at her with half frightened eyes, “sometimes still I feel a wee bit sick at mass.”
It was indeed strange that he too should feel the ambivalence of the Holy Mother.
“I know what you mean,” she said; “I never exactly feel sick—but I know what you mean.”
“Do you?” he cried eagerly, “and you brought up in it too!”