"Ruin me, do you mean, by ten courses every evening, like the dinners West-end philanthropists used to give our men to show them how to behave at table? We 'll be very economical, only having meat twice a week—salt fish the other days—but it will always be dinner."
"What ails you at tea-dinner, John? it's very tasty and homely."
"It's wicked, auntie, and has done more injury to religion than drinking. No, I'm not joking—that is a childish habit—but giving utterance to profound truth, which ought to be proclaimed on the house-tops, or perhaps in the kitchens.
"Let me explain, and I 'll make it as plain as day—all heresy is just bad thinking, and that comes from bad health, and the foundation of health is food. A certain number of tea-dinners would make a man into a Plymouth brother. It's a mere question of time.
"You see if a man's digestion is good he takes a cheerful view of things; but if he is full of bile, then he is sure that everybody is going to be lost except himself and his little set, and that's heresy. Apologetics is just dietetics; now there 's an epigram made for you on the spot, and you don't know what it means, so we 'll have a walk instead."
His aunt knew what was coming, but was too late to resist, so she was twice taken round the room for exercise, till she cried out for mercy, and was left to rest while Carmichael went out to get an appetite for that dinner.
Nothing was said during its progress, but when Sarah had finally departed after her first triumph, won under every adverse circumstance of strangeness and limited resources, Carmichael took his aunt's hand and kissed it.
"It is an illuminated address you deserve, auntie, for such a paragon; as it is, I shall be the benefactor of a Presbytery, asking the men up by turns on fast-days, and sending them home speechless with satisfaction."
"Sarah was always a clever woman; if she had only—" But Carmichael heard not, in his boyish excitement of householding.
"Clever is a cold word for such genius. Mark my words, there is not a manse in Perthshire that shall not sound with the praise of Sarah. I vow perpetual celibacy on the spot. No man would dream of marrying that had the privilege of such a housekeeper."