The president's voice trembled with solemnity.
He stretched forth his hands, slowly repeating the words, "dead and rotten and forgotten," until his wandering eyes came to rest on the young man's neck.
Andrew drew back a step and bowed silently, as he had seen many a father do at a christening in the kirk at Wheens.
"You will shortly," continued the president, with a return to his ordinary manner, "hear an address on female suffrage from one of the noblest women in the land. It will be your part to listen. To-night you will both hear and see strange things. Say nothing. Evince no surprise. Some members are irritable. Come!"
Once more he took Andrew by the hand, and led him into the meeting-room; and still his eyes were fixed on the probationer's neck. There seemed to be something about it that he liked.
It was not then, with the committee all around him, but long afterwards at Wheens, that Andrew was struck by the bareness of the chambers.
Without the president's presence they had no character.
The trifles were absent that are to a room what expression is to the face.
The tenant might have been a medical student who knew that it was not worth while to unpack his boxes.
The only ornament on the walls was an elaborate sketch by a member, showing the arrangement of the cellars beneath the premises of the Young Men's Christian Association.