“I had thought,” he confessed to me, “that you were one of those who did not like my preaching.”
“You were mistaken,” I said, gravely. I dared not tell him that, except his mother, none would have sat under him so eagerly as I.
“Nevertheless,” he said, “you were a member of the Auld Licht church in Mr. Carfrae’s time, and you left it when I came.”
“I heard your first sermon,” I said.
“Ah,” he replied. “I had not been long in Thrums before I discovered that if I took tea with any of my congregation and declined a second cup, they thought it a reflection on their brewing.”
“You must not look upon my absence in that light,” was all I could say. “There are reasons why I cannot come.”
He did not press me further, thinking I meant that the distance was too great, though frailer folk than I walked twenty miles to hear him. We might have parted thus had we not wandered by chance to the very spot where I had met him and Babbie. There is a seat there now for those who lose their breath on the climb up, and so I have two reasons nowadays for not passing the place by.
We read each other’s thoughts, and Gavin said calmly, “I have not seen her since that night. She disappeared as into a grave.”
How could I answer when I knew that Babbie was dying for want of him, not half a mile away?